The Archangel of Peace
by etj4Eagle
Summary: Acting as a courier in the secret peace negations, Lacus Clyne was on Heliopolis during that fateful day in CE 71. From one changed meeting, ripples of change will spread out through the cosmic era stories. KxL, primary focus. A Whatif divergence fic.
1. A Pebble Falls

**The Archangel of Peace**

**Extended Summary:** This is a what-if divergence story that will focus on the relationship between Kira and Lacus. The point of divergence is that as part of the secret peace negotiations between her father and the secretary-general of the Earth Alliance, Lacus travels to Heliopolis as a courier due to illness preventing Reverend Malchio from being the courier for this exchange. Consequently, when ZAFT launches their attack she is also caught up in the events surrounding the Archangel and its escape. This story will be a Kira – Lacus pairing, other cannon pairings will exist. I expect the story to continue into at least Destiny.

**Chapter 1: A Pebble Falls**

**Date Posted: 12/24/06  
****Last Edit: 12/25/06**

**Disclaimer: **A reminder I own none of the characters of this story, all rights are owned by others. However, the unique circumstances of the story are mine. If you distribute the story, do only so freely and inform me of where you post it. If you wish to play in the universe variant that I am creating feel free, just send me a link to you story and give credit where credit is due.

**Orb L3 Colony Heliopolis:**

For the time, Heliopolis was an oasis of peace from the war that had broken out between the nations of the Earth and the colonies located at the L5 Lagrange Point. For Lacus arriving at this colony was like taking a breath of fresh air. Even though the PLANTS themselves had not been threatened since the Blue Cosmos terrorist attack that had destroyed Junius 7, there still was a constant undercurrent of tension from the fighting within the Earth Sphere. But here on Orb's neutral colony that tension was completely absent. And its absence warmed her heart, but at the same time she was slightly saddened by it was well.

Stopping to look in the window of a bakery, Lacus's thoughts turned more introspective as she tried to figure out why the absence of tension here in Heliopolis was bothering her. After all, Orb was an example of how things should be with Naturals and Coordinators living happily together. Breaking away from the window, she continued on walking. As she passed by a group of residents watching the latest news reports of the fighting down on the Earth, she was finally handed her answer. It was not the lack of tension that was bothering her, but it was their utter disinterest as to what was happening. Lacus of course knew of Orb's ideals and stated position of not becoming involved in the wars of others, but that did not mean that its government and people should pretend that the war did not matter. The war would only stop when enough people stood up and demanded that there be peace.

Peace that being what had brought her, the daughter of the PLANT Supreme Council chairman, Siegel Clyne, here to Heliopolis. She was here covertly to deliver a communiqué from her father that would eventually reach the secretary general of the Earth Alliance who was like minded in his desire for peace. It was their hope that these secret negotiations would eventually be able to lead to a cease fire and lasting peace. Normally, the reverend Malchio was her father's courier, meeting the Earth Alliance courier at his island home outside of orb. But a nasty flu bug had taken a hold in a couple of the orphans that Malchio cared for, preventing him from traveling to the PLANTS.

Siegel, like any parent, had absolutely no desire to send his teenaged daughter potential into harms way. Ideally there should have been no danger in delivering the communiqué, as Siegel fully trusted his negotiation partner and the exchange was going to occur at a neutral colony. But there were factions on both sides who were not interested in peace and would likely not hesitate to attack even their own people if it could be used to escalate the war. And as such, these negotiations were done in absolute secrecy. All the PLANT Supreme Council knew was that he was involved in negotiations, but that was it. They did not have a need-to-know to even know how successful the negotiations might be so as to avoid spooking the more war mongering factions into trying to escalate the war.

Even with a like minded negotiation partner, success of the negotiations was not anywhere near a sure thing. Each new day brought the potential that something might happen which could destroy all that they had worked for so far and as such Siegel worked under a time pressure so as to ensure that he could reach an agreement while he still retained enough influence to get the council to agree to it. And, it was that time pressure that forced him to send his own daughter to in Malchio's place. Even still his desire to protect his daughter caused him to change the rendezvous location from Earth to Heliopolis where she would be closer to home.

Her participation in the memorial service for Julius 7 provided the perfect cover for her travel from the PLANTS and the routing of her ship, the Silverwind, was conveniently chosen to pass by the L3 point. While the ship had not actually approached Heliopolis, they had passed close enough for a shuttle to secretly carry her to Heliopolis. As far as anyone on the Silverwind knew, she was currently indisposed in her quarters with a stomach bug, which would she would magically recover from when she returned from her little trip.

She had of course entered Heliopolis under a false name, using Sagara as her surname. And to further prevent any ZAFT spies onboard from recognizing her identity as well as helping her to sneak off the Silverwind, she had died her hair black. For Lacus this anonymity that her mission was requiring was also giving her the unique opportunity to be a normal teenager for once. As the daughter of Siegel Clyne and even more so as a pop idol, she never had the opportunity to enjoy a normal childhood – she was just too well known to be able to go anywhere without being instantly recognized by everyone. She was in no way bitter about the loss of her childhood as she very much enjoyed being able to sing and bring joy to others. But as she experienced anonymity for the first time in her teenaged life, she found that she was really enjoying it and was glad that the person she was supposed to handle the communiqué to would not arrive till tomorrow.

Moving on from the crowd that was watching the latest war reports, Lacus continued on along the road. With no destination in mind, she just let her feet carry her where they may as she took in the sights. While Heliopolis was an older colony model and did not have any truly distinctive architecture, Lacus was still quite enjoying her sightseeing. For her, just being able to watch Naturals and Coordinators interact in peace warmed her heart and she decided as she walked that her next song would pay tribute to this colony.

Eventually, Lacus's wanderings brought her to one of the many parks that dotted the length of Heliopolis. This particular one was down at the southern end of the colony, the end with the resource satellite. As Lacus entered the park, she had a strong desire suddenly to run and join in with the young children who were playing around. However, she restrained herself and instead simply walked over to one of the swings.

Unbeknownst to Lacus as she was indulging her childhood desires, events that had the potential to widen the war had already been set into motion. As much as Orb strived to remain out of the growing conflict between the PLANTS and the nations of Earth, a faction within the Orb Union government had gained approval for Morgenroete to develop military technology for the Atlantic Federation. And while this relationship was kept secret, ZAFT had, through its spies, learned of the program to develop the G-weapons. Plans had been immediately drawn up to both prevent the prototype mobile suits from being transferred to the Atlantic Federation and to further gain the technology for themselves. And now as Lacus swung on the swings while enjoying the energy of children playing around her, the plan moved from into its overt stage as ZAFT launched an assault on the neutral colony of Heliopolis.

_'Huh, what was that?'_ Lacus thought as she felt a sudden gust of wind. Bringing her swinging to a quick stop, she stood and turned to look behind her towards the factory district, which was just a few blocks away, and felt her stomach drop. _'Mobile Suits? But, what are they doing here, this is a neutral colony.'_ A very confused and now nervous Lacus thought to herself.

Any hope that there might have been some good reason for ZAFT units to be here in Heliopolis was killed a minute later when the emergency sirens began to sound. Around the colony panicked citizens who had thought that the war would just pass them by began to dash to the emergency shelters, while outside the Orb Union Defense Forces did their best to fight off the attacking ZAFT forces – a loosing battle. In the park, parents did their best to calm their own children as they left for one of the shelters. Unfortunately, many of the children in the park were without parents. Heliopolis was a very safe colony and as such parents often let their children go to this park unescorted, which during peace time was fine. But now that the colony had fallen under attack there was no one who undertook the responsibility for calming the children, who were expecting the colony to explode around them at any moment.

When the alarms sounded, Lacus had moved to join in with the flow of exiting park patrons. But as she walked across the playground to the path, she saw that there were a large number of children who were either standing or sitting on the ground crying for their parents. Unable to ignore their cries, Lacus walked over to the nearest child.

"Hey it's going to be okay." Lacus said as she knelt down by the child. Reaching to give the child a comforting hug, she absently began to sing an uplifting song. And as she sung, the child's tears slowly stopped and he lifted his head from his arm to look up at her with hope filled eyes.

Giving the child a heartwarming smile, she stood up and offered him her hand. Then once he had taken it, she walked onto the next nearest child, continuing her song. Hearing her song, this second child also stopped his crying as his fear fled in the presence of her song. And from there, Lacus moved from child to child, adding each one to her growing group until there were no children left unaccounted for.

Once she had gathered them all, Lacus turned to face the children. Stopping her singing for a moment, she knelt down amongst them and said, "Don't be afraid. We are going to be okay. Now why doesn't everyone take someone's hand and let's see about finding a shelter."

Once Lacus received the tentative nods from her collection of children and she saw that everyone was holding hands, she stood back up. Taking a hold of the hands of two of the children herself, she began again her song and led them out of the park. Though this time as she sung, she purposely chose a song that the children could singe as well and by the time they had left the park all of the children were singing with her.

As they searched for shelters, Lacus initially tried to lead them away from the factory district, but as they came to one shelter after another she found that they were already full and that the occupants were not willing to risk adding even an additional child. It was not till they came to the fourth shelter area that they were able to find room for any of the children and then only two of the children found shelter there. But after that bit of good fortune, Lacus found misfortune where a large explosion had rendered the road in front of them impassible. Doing her best to not let her disappointment show, Lacus began to lead the group back towards the factory district. While there was always the option now that they were away from the immediate area of fighting to just wait out the battle, she knew that that was not a good option. The biggest threat to those in colonies come not so much from the actual fighting, but the possibility that the colony's skin might be punctured.

_'At least the children no longer seem to be scared even though we are heading back towards the fighting.'_ Lacus thought to herself as she began to walk up to another shelter. "Excuse me, but do you have any space available?" Lacus asked as she activated the communication console.

"Yes we have room for one more person." The reply came.

"Who wants to go in this shelter?" Lacus asked the children as she turned back to them. However, to her surprise not one of them replied. "How about you? Why don't you go?" Lacus suggested to one of the younger children.

"No wanna. Stay with you." The little child said as she shook her head while walking forward and grabbing a hold of Lacus's dress with her little fingers.

Kneeling down to unpeel the child's fingers, Lacus stopped as she saw the little girl's eyes. The feelings reflected in them broke her resolve. Sighing instead Lacus turned and looked at the rest of the children and asked, "Do all of you want to stay with me?"

When she got the affirmative nods, she stood back up. She knew what she was about to do was very foolish, but part of her just could not let go of the children. Walking back up to the console, she activated it a second time. "I have a lot of little children; do you think you might take more than one?" Lacus asked, hoping that maybe if they would take more than one then she could convince the children to go.

"Sorry we don't have the room. We are already overfilled as it is." The voice came back.

"Thanks for your offer of taking one of them, but I am afraid that we are just going to have to try the next set of shelters." Lacus said before leaving the shelter's entrance. Then rejoining the children, she reached out her arms to take their hands and resumed their search for a shelter.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

Not far from where Lacus was unknowingly leading her army of children, Kira Yamato was receiving a crash course in mobile suit operation as he fought for his life against one of the attacking ZAFT units. While some of his research work at college involved mobile suit design, in particular OS development, he had never piloted one before today. But thankfully for him, the Morgenroete "engineer" that he had appropriated this suit from, and his friends who had strayed too close to the current battle, he was a quick study. Having now finished rewriting the pathetic excuse for an OS that Morgenroete had originally installed, Kira began to examine what options this unit had in the ways of weapons, hoping to find something before his luck ran out.

"What only Armor Schneiders?" Kira exclaimed as he saw the results of his weapons' query. _'How do they expect to do anything with only those two items as weapons?'_ he wondered as he dodged out of another attack.

With no other option, Kira activated the Armor Schneiders, which were stored in the hip armor of his suit. Once the suit had retrieved them, maneuvered his suit into position and then rushed the enemy suit. Dodging low under another attack, he brought his suit up at the last moment while slamming one of the "knifes" into the chest of the enemy unit. The force of impact drove the blade through both the cockpit and the protective shielding that protected the battery pack.

Stepping back from the enemy suit, Kira's eyes instinctively moved to scanning the various camera displays to make sure that there was not a second threat. Finding none, he started to give a sigh of relief that was quickly cut short as he noticed the warning signs of a cascade battery failure in the suit he had just taken out. Reacting so as to move his own suit out of the way, his breath caught as he noticed a group of children on the other side of the failing GINN. _'They are all going to be killed!'_ He mentally yelled.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

In searching for a shelter with sufficient space for her charges, Lacus had lost track of where they were wandering and had ended up getting a whole lot closer to the battle than she would have wanted. She only realized how close they had gotten when the sound of a rapid firing Gatling gun ripped through the air. Looking up, she was startled to see that they were practically right on top of the two battling mobile suits. Around her the children whimpered and when one of suits backed into a building, destroying it, her song died on her lips. Now no better than the children, she watched the ensuing mayhem as fear riveted her feet to the ground.

Lost to their fear, the group could only cluster together as they watched the battle unfold. When the blue suit jabbed its Armor Schneider through the chest of the other suit some of the kids hid their heads in Lacus's dress. If she had been her right mind, she might have tried to get them away from the battle, but as it was they remained standing fully exposed to the pending explosion.

But then to their startled surprise the blue suit lunged forward towards them. Startled by the suit's sudden movement, Lacus's eyes went wide in fear, sure that the pilot was going to kill them. And even though it would make no difference, Lacus tried to shield the children with her body pulling as many of them in front of her as she turned her back to the suit. As such she heard but did not see the damaged GINN explode.

"Shh… it's okay." Lacus said trying to calm the children following the explosion before standing back upright and turning to look behind her. As she regarded the blue suit, she noted how it had likely saved their life as outside of the cone of shelter from that suit, the area was torn up by the shrapnel of the detonating suit.

Amazed and knowing that she owed the pilot of this suit thanks, Lacus watched as the pilot maneuvered the suit so that it was resting with one knee on the ground. Behind her the children who were already forgetting their fear and developing amazement at seeing a mobile suit up close in person formed a pyramid of bodies behind her as they each wanted to get a look at the suit but also wanted to just peak out from behind someone else.

Lacus was wondering if she should approach the suit when a gentle voice that sounded much too young to be a pilot of a war machine asked, "Are you okay?"

The pilot, however, did not wait for Lacus to respond. Instead, after asking the question he released the cockpit seals. For Kira, he was glad now that his time as a mobile suit pilot was over and especially glad that he had managed to save the children. But as much as he wanted to get out of this suit as fast as possible, he patiently waited for the cockpit to fully open, as he after all had a wounded engineer that he needed to help down.

When Lacus saw that the pilot appeared to be trying to remove someone else from the cockpit, she walked over to the suit. As she got closer, she was surprised to see that neither the pilot, who appeared to be about her age, nor the other person were dressed in Orb military uniforms. Putting aside that question for the moment, she held her arms up as Kira started to reach the ground so that she could help him with the unconscious engineer. With her help the two of them were able to get bring the engineer to some shade beside one of the buildings.

"What's wrong with her?" Lacus asked once they had placed Murrue Ramius down.

"She was shot during the attack." Kira replied as he knelt down to check Murrue's pulse.

Now even more concerned over the health of this engineer, Lacus turned to the children who had followed her as she helped Kira. Then speaking to the two who appeared to be the eldest, she said, "Could tho two of you go together and see if you could find us a first aid kit? But if you don't find one quickly just come on back."

"'Kay" the two of them replied before running off down one of the streets.

Watching them go, Lacus thought, _'I hope that they will be okay.'_ before turning back to help with the patient. Deciding to first introduce herself to her savior she said with a large smile, "My name's Lacus Sagara. Thank you again very much for saving our lives."

Hearing Lacus speak, Kira looked up from the unconscious woman and looked at Lacus for the first time. Blushing from her radiant smile, Kira replied, "It was nothing. I could not let you get hurt." And then after a moment he added, "Oh and my name is Kira Yamato."

"Well thank you again Kira. If it had not been for you, I don't know what would have happened to me and these children."

With Lacus's thanks, his annoyance over being knocked into the cockpit of this prototype suit and forced to fight to save his life vanished. Somehow he felt that it was all worth it to receive this girl's thanks. "Do you know anything about treating gunshot wounds?" Kira finally asked a few moments later, reverting to the task at hand as he was unsure of what to say to such a cute girl.

Shaking her head, Lacus in a slightly deflated voice said, "No, but I think we probably need to get to her wound so that we can clean and bandage it."

With that said, Lacus and Kira worked together to carefully remove the jacket component of Murrue's Morgenroete coveralls. Once that was done, Kira used a pocket knife of his to cut away the shirt where the bullet had entered.

"How did you end up with so many children?" Kira asked when it became apparent that they could not do anything more until they got a first aid kit.

"They were in the park when the sirens sounded and they had no one to look after them." Lacus replied.

"They were lucky then to have you." Kira replied as he gave Lacus a smile that told her that he felt that what she had done for these children was even more important than what he had done.

"Than…"

"Kira!" came the yell of Miriallia as she spied Kira, cutting off Lacus.

Turning to look in the direction of the shout, Kira and Lacus saw that the two kids that Lacus had sent out looking for a first aid kit had apparently hooked up with Kira's friends. Relieved that his friends were okay, Kira, with Lacus following, stood and headed over to greet his friends.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

**L3 Colony Heliopolis**

**Beside the Strike**

Slowly Murrue Ramius, a lieutenant in the Atlantic Federation military, began to regain consciousness. As she lay on the ground, she tried to remember what had happened while part of her absently noted the light breeze. It was not till she heard a young voice ask, "So this is a real mobile suit?" that her military training kicked in and she regained full use of her faculties. Opening her eyes, she moved to get up so that she could secure the one surviving G-weapon from the civilians. However, she was not able to raise her back any farther than a couple of inches off the ground before a hand gently but very firmly pushed her back down.

"Careful there, you are hurt." A girl's voice informed her.

Turning in the direction of the voice, Murrue saw a teenaged girl with a concerned expression. "It's okay, I'll be alright." Murrue said knowing that securing the suit was her first priority.

"Then let us at least help you." A male voice from her other side and Murrue felt a helping hand reach around to her back.

Once both Kira and Lacus had helped her to sit up, she turned to the boy and said, "Thank you." _'At least he is still here that should make things easier.'_ Murrue thought to herself as she realized that Kira was the boy who had piloted the Strike, as protocol dictated detaining all unauthorized personal who had come into contact with any of the G weapons.

Then remembering what had gotten her moving in the first place, Murrue surprised her two caregivers as she suddenly stood up and called over to the kids who were playing around the mobile suit. "Get away from that machine. It is highly classified." And when there was no other response to her words others than some of them briefly turning to look at her, she pulled out her gun, loaded a round, and pointed it at the group.

Seeing the gun, both Kira's and Lacus's eyes went wide, not so much for Kira's friends but for all of the little kids who had of course moved to investigating the "cool" machine that had saved them. "What do you think you are doing?" Kira yelled at Murrue as his arm shot out and knocked the gun free of her hand. Hitting the ground, the chambered round discharged with a loud crack, instantly grabbing everyone's attention. Thankfully, though, through fortuitous luck the round discharged in a safe direction.

"What do you think you are doing kid? You could have seriously hurt someone with that stunt!" Murrue exclaimed as she rounded on Kira, the Strike no longer foremost on her mind.

"But you were the one who pulled the gun on the children." Kira retorted.

"Yes, but I knew what I was doing. You could have easily killed one of them if gun had discharged in just a slightly different direction."

"Why did you bring out your gun in the first place? The children have done nothing to you?" Lacus asked trying to diffuse the building argument between Kira and the engineer.

"I am Lieutenant Murrue Ramius with the Atlantic Federation and that mobile suit is a highly classified project of the Earth Alliance. It is not something that civilians should be playing around with."

"What is the Earth Alliance doing here? Orb is not part of your war. You're the reason why ZAFT attacked aren't you?" Kira said accusing Murrue.

"Kira, ZAFT is as much at fault for attacking your colony." Lacus said trying to calm Kira. While her voice was soothing inside she was very much upset at the actions of ZAFT, as she could not think of any justification for violating the neutrality of this colony and especially for fighting inside of the colony. "The question is what do we do now."

Hearing Lacus's words and remembering again about the children, Kira let his anger deflate. She was right after all, how this started did not matter right now, what mattered was what they were going to do now.

"You have all been exposed to highly classified material and as such I will have to detain all of you." Murrue explained.

At first Kira was going to complain about the unfairness of the situation, but then as he thought about how best to make this Earth Alliance officer understand, he realized that maybe for now this was the best option. In looking over at the others while he thought, his eyes had caught site of the mobile suit and his mind had flashed back over the preceding battle. In particular, he had remembered first seeing his friends run along the street trying to get out of the way of the battle and then Lacus and her children. And with having remembered those two memories he had realized that he still needed that mobile suit no matter how much he might dislike what it stood for. "We will stay, under the condition that you let me pilot the GUNDAM should I need it to protect my friends." Kira said after a few moments in which he came to his decision.

"Gundam?" Murrue asked, confused as to what Kira was referring to.

"Your mobile suit." Kira said as he gestured over to the Strike clarifying what he was referring.

_'Hmm… I do remember seeing something like that when the OS booted.'_ Murrue thought to herself before moving on to contemplate Kira's offer. While ideally she should prevent any further exposure of classified material to these kids, with the current situation that just really wasn't possible. Her best option for maintaining possession of the Strike ironically was to relinquish it into the hands of this kid. The previous battle had shown had incompetent she was in piloting it and conversely how skilled he was. "Okay that is reasonable for now. I am Murrue what is your name?" Murrue asked as she held out her hand.

"I'm Kira, Kira Yamato" Kira said as he took Murrue's hand.

"And I am Lacus Sagara; it is a pleasure to meet you." Lacus said.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

**L3 Colony Heliopolis**

**Archangel – Mobile Suit Hanger**

Sometime later and following a second firefight, both Kira and Lacus were starting to have very dim views of the ZAFT commander in charge of this operation. While in truth the second battle had only involved one ZAFT mobile suit, it was quite apparent that its pilot had purposely entered the colony, for what reason neither Kira nor Lacus knew. And while it was Kira who had been the one to blow a hole in the colony's side, Lacus could not blame him, he was not the trained mobile suit pilot. At least an Earth warship had also been hidden in the factory hangers and its appearance into the colony proper had finally scared off the enemy suit, at least for the moment.

While Kira was a bit flabbergasted to see a warship blast its way into the center of the colony, he was at the same time relieved to see it. At minimum, the children and his friends would be able to find refuge aboard it. Once the Archangel had landed and a chain of command had been established on the severely undermanned ship, Lacus was given permission to bring the kids on board into the mobile suit hanger while Kira and his friends were conscripted into helping to recover what was salvageable from the Morgenroete facilities.

Now finished with helping to load the supplies, Kira maneuvered the Strike into its docking bay. Once the clamps had secured themselves to the exoskeleton, he powered down the system, hoping that this would finally be the last time that he had to enter this cockpit. Now that it was onboard its ship, there had to be regular pilots for it and he, his friends, Lacus and her collected children would finally be able to go home.

When he lowered himself down from the suit's cockpit a few minutes later, it was into the middle of a crowd of Atlantic Federation personal who had gathered in the docking bay to see this miraculous suit and its ace pilot. Expecting to see an Earth Alliance pilot, they were all surprised when a civilian kid lowered himself down from the suit.

Putting two and two together, Mu La Flaga decided to step forward and to break the ice. He highly suspected that this kid was a Coordinator and unlike much of the brass in the Atlantic Federation he had no problems with Coordinators and he hoped that the crew would be smart enough not to take issue either. But at the same time he knew that if this kid was one, then they had best get that out in the open first.

Reaching out a hand in friendship, Mu said, "Great flying there kid."

"I just did what needed to be done to protect all of my friends." Kira said and as he said that his eyes caught those of Lacus, letting the black haired girl know that he included her amongst his friends as well.

Nodding his head, Mu asked in an offhand manner "You're a coordinator aren't you?"

"That's right. I am a first generation coordinator." Kira replied

His reply was met by gasps amongst many of the rank and file crew members of the Archangel and they quickly withdrew their weapons and pointed them Kira's way. As they did so, Ensign Badgiruel looked at Ramius who was now in command of the Archangel for orders, wanting to know if they needed to suit this Coordinator as a spy or to escort him down to the brig.

"What are you doing, so what if he is a Coordinator? He's still Kira." Tolle exclaimed at the soldiers.

"And he just saved all of you by piloting that mobile suit." Sai added.

Not to be out down by those two friends, the children who had also been brought onboard, started yelling "No, No!" having realized that these new people wanted to do something bad to Kira.

Watching this all unfold Lacus felt the same disbelief over what was happening. She could not believe that after what he had done to help them that these soldiers would now consider him a threat. As Tolle and the rest of Kira's friends tried to convey understanding to the Atlantic Federation soldiers by staring at them, Lacus briskly walked over to Kira. Then placing herself in front of him, she held out her arms so as to shield Kira from any shots that might be fired with her own body. While the crew did not notice what Lacus was doing until she put her arms out, many of the children saw her move and followed her and then proceeded to replicate her actions.

_'Wow he already has quite a following.'_ Mu thought to himself as gave a chuckle while reaching up so as to sheepishly scratch the back of his hand. "Oops, did not mean to create such a commotion. I was just curious given that the specially trained pilots were barely able to get those mobile suits to move."

"Stand down, Kira Yamato is guest." Lieutenant Ramius said as Mu comment broke the tension his previous question had caused.

"But Lieutenant." Badgiruel interdicted.

"I know Ensign, but Mr. Yamato is not a threat to us." Ramius replied and with that reply, the weapons were safed and returned to their holsters as Kira and his friends breathed a sigh of relief.

As Kira gave Mu a smile indicating that he did not harbor any hard feelings for the question, he also reached forward and placed his hands on Lacus's forearms so as to direct them back down to her side. Then with her arms down, he took a step to the left and forward so that he stood beside Lacus, though as he did so, he absently left his right hand on Lacus's right arm. Once he stood beside Lacus he said, "I am not interested in your war. I fought simply to protect my friends and the children."

"And that is the way it should be." Mu said before momentarily giving Murrue a look that indicated that there were some things that needed to be discussed now.

Seeing the look that Mu sent her way, Murrue nodded her head and then addressing Badgiruel she said, "Ensign, please take charge of readying the ship for a second attack. ZAFT is bound to be back before long and with a stronger force. Also please have someone show these children to some quarters, they have been exposed to the classified material and for now they will have to come with us. Lieutenant La Flaga will take care of Mr. Yamato and his companion shortly; the four of us have some things to discuss first."

"Ma'am" Badgiruel replied as she saluted Ramius before moving to carryout her orders.

Then turning to regard Kira and Lacus, Ramius said, "Why don't the four of us retire to the captain's quarters so as to discuss what we do next." _'Hmm… wonder why the two of them are blushing like that?'_ Ramius thought to herself as she noticed the red faces and how Lacus and Kira were now standing more ram rod than they had before.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

**L3 Colony Heliopolis**

**Archangel – Captain's Quarters**

"I would offer you some refreshments, but I don't think that there are any here to offer, this ship hasn't even been commissioned." Ramius said as she led them over towards the desk is the office portion of what was now her quarters. Taking a seat behind the desk, she indicated to Kira and Lacus that they should be seated as well. For his part Mu decided to lean against one of the walls with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

Having an idea of why La Flaga had suggested this meeting, Ramius began with, "Lieutenant what is the status of your mobile armor?"

"Inoperable. While the damage should be repairable with the facilities that we have aboard this ship, it cannot be used without a few hours of repair."

Even though she had expected to hear those words, Murrue still sighed in response. When she had seen his mobile armor in the hanger earlier, she had actually been a bit surprised that he managed to successfully land it in the Archangel. "What about the Strike?"

"You mean the mobile suit that the kid was piloting? Specially trained pilots could barely get that thing to function and I have not had their training. I am sorry, but sending me out in that thing would be no better than simply giving ZAFT the suit gift wrapped."

"Aren't there other pilots on board?" Kira asked heatedly as he began to realize where this conversation was going.

"Unfortunately, the pilots for the suits were killed when the ship I was assigned to tried to help defend Heliopolis from the ZAFT attack." La Flaga said with honest sorrow over what he was in the process of forcing the kid to do.

Placing a comforting hand on Kira's elbow, Lacus stilled Kira's pending protest. "The colony will not survive another battle will it?" Lacus asked in her quiet voice.

"I am afraid not, that shot from the Hyper Impulse cannon in the Launcher pack, punched a substantial hole in the colony's skin. The shelters are already fully locked down and any more damage to the colony will likely result in their ejection." Ramius admitted.

"But…" Kira began intending to complain how stupid fighting in a colony was, but a slight pressure from Lacus's hand calmed him.

"Is there no other option for us than remaining on this ship?" Lacus asked.

"With the shelters in lock down, even if we found one, we would be unable to get in." Kira admitted as he began to realize that he was going to have to return to that blasted suit once again. And given the way things were, he had no idea when he would be able to finally leave the suit behind. But as he turned his gaze from the acting captain to the girl he had just met this afternoon, he realized that if it meant protecting her and the children then he would make the sacrifice. And while he had no idea how he would be able protect her and them until they all found safety; he vowed to himself that he would find a way. When Kira turned back to look at her, Ramius knew from the hardness of his gaze that he had made his decision.

"Fine, then for now I will protect the ship so as to protect my friends, Lacus, and the children." Kira stated in a firm voice.

Somehow having a sense of how hard this decision to fight was for the boy beside her was, Lacus decided to let him know how much his decision meant to her. She also vowed to herself that she would stay by his side during this trip, to be the support that the gentle heart that she was sure that he had would need in the face of the sorrow that he was bound to face. With that vow made, she turned to Kira and once she caught his eyes said, "Thank you, I know that you don't like fighting and neither do I. But protecting the lives of these children is a noble task and no one can blame you for taking up your sword to do so. Just stay true to your heart." And then to seal her thanks, she leaned in and gave a Kira a quick kiss on his cheek.

Smiling as she saw that this girl Lacus was willing to help support Kira, Murrue felt a slightly bit better about having railroaded him into joining in the war. "Kira, given your position as the Strike's pilot, you will have a temporary field commission as an Ensign." Ramius said and then holding up her hand to forestall any complaints, she said, "I know you have no desire to be part of the military and this is only a formality. The only thing I want from you is for you to where a uniform and in exchange I will have Lt La Flaga show you to one of the officer quarters. The Lt will also escort you, Ms. Sagara, to the crew quarters that the rest of the civilians will be using."

-End Chapter 1

Author Notes:

I hope that you all liked this first chapter. This story will focus on the relationship that will develop between Kira and Lacus. Much of my inspiration for this story comes from the works by LacusFan, IronicEnding and Ben Firebird. Work on this story will be second to my Sailor Moon epic, but I already have some future major scenes mapped out and I look forward to reaching them in the story as much as I hope you all will look forward to reading them. As always I welcome all comments whether positive or constructive.

12/25 update: A couple of typographical errors caught by Ethan have been corrected


	2. Departures

**Chapter 2: Departures**

**L3 Colony Heliopolis  
****Archangel Captain's Quarters**

Slumping slightly into the desk chair of her captain's quarters, Murrue sighed as her mind reviewed the conversation she had just had with Lt La Flaga, the newly commissioned Ensign Yamato and the civilian Lacus Sagara. _'I know there are soldiers as young as him fighting on the front line, but still...'_ Murrue thought to herself as guilt for what she had just done began to set in. Intellectually she knew that pressing Kira into service was the only reasonable option for her to take and that even if he had been entirely unwilling that it was still the best option for him personally as well. Even with knowing that she still wished that she hadn't had to rob him of his innocence. _'Am I even cut out for this? I am just a 2__nd__ Lieutenant.'_ Murrue thought to herself, wishing again that La Flaga, who was a higher grade than her, had taken command of the ship instead of passing it on to her.

She did fully understand La Flaga's reason for giving her the captaincy of the ship. And, while some of those reasons might not matter as much right now with his Moebius Zero damaged, once it was repaired they would be much better off with him out there than in the captain's chair. But even still, understanding the why did not make the task she now faced any easier to deal with. Unfortunately, for the same reasons why she was now in command of a capital warship, Murrue also knew that she did not have the luxury of self doubt. Outside the colony waited a ZAFT expeditionary force of unknown size, a force that had already once violated the neutrality of this colony and all that she to stand against beside the kid and the one G weapon was a bare minimum skeleton crew.

_'The crew will be counting on me. I cannot let them sense my self doubt.'_ Murrue told herself, knowing that even more so now than normally that the crew would need a strong captain. She would need to be the mountain that would stand self assured against the typhoon that they were about to face. _'When I leave this stateroom, I must leave behind all of my fears.'_

Sliding out her chair and standing up, Murrue took a few cleansing breaths as she tried to focus her mind on what needed to be done as opposed to how hopeless their situation was. Walking over to the mirror so as to straighten her uniform, Murrue began to mentally take stock of their situation. Between the effort of the Strike's pilot, his friends, and now the crew of the ship, they were transferring anything of salvageable value from the Morgenroete facility. Using the Strike to cart the supplies had already given them a substantial head start as it had been able to carryover in single trips what normally would have taken multiple truck trips, saving them valuable time.

Hopefully with those supplies they might have a fighting chance against the ZAFT forces, as compared to no chance if they had not had the opportunity to supply themselves at all. While Murrue would have liked to have taken credit for thinking ahead to their escape, her focus in the immediate aftermath of finding the Strike to still be in one piece had been strictly on getting it equipped with one of the Striker packs so as to make use its spare battery. The attack from the straggler ZAFT MS had proven that course of action well founded, as Kira had been able to re-energize the phase shift armor in the knick of time. Unfortunately, that battle with the appearance of the Archangel was also where Murrue had made the rookie mistake of relieving herself of her independent actions, expecting further orders to come from the commander of the ship. In hindsight she now knew that the correct course of action, one that had been taught during her training, would have been to have continued operating as she had been until a superior officer relieved her, as even if the situation had not been so dire there were still plenty of reasons why her actions had been foolish.

Remembering her mistake, Murrue's thoughts moved onto how Lacus covered for her as she thought, _'That girl, Lacus, however, did far better than me.'_ while remembering how Lacus had convinced the other kids to join her in collecting more supplies for Kira. Seeing the soft spoken girl snap off orders that brokered no complaint to the others had snapped reminded Murrue that they were far from being out of the woods. Between the two of them directing the kids they had been able to gather a fair bit of equipment by the time the Archangel had landed, a pile that was made even larger when after a comment by Lacus Murrue had used the radio in the truck that had previously held the Launcher pack to instruct Kira use the Strike to recover the larger pieces of equipment from Morgenroete. _'Some point when we have real time to relax, I will need let her know how much I appreciate all that she has done for this ship. If we survive, it will be directly due to her help.'_ Murrue decided as she mentally acknowledged Lacus's contributions.

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Entering onto the bridge, Murrue asked, "Ensign what is the status of the supply operation?"

"Lieutenant, we have secured all mobile suit parts or weapons that were salvageable from the factory district and have begun to load on provisions." Badgiruel replied after saluting Murrue.

"Do we have an inventory of what we have been able to load?"

"Not currently. I felt it best not to spare man power checking what we had and to instead collect as much as we could. We did, though, manage to collect all of the remaining Striker Packs, including the spares."

"Wise thinking Ensign." Murrue said, knowing as well that with the current situation that they were far better off to just grab and then sort through what they had later. Ending up with too much of one item or having wasted a little time collecting parts for one of the stolen units was much better than the alternative of missing something critical because they ran out of time.

Sitting down in the captain's chair, Murrue asked, "Have you been able to get into contact with the colony authority?"

"Yes, and the situation is not good. They colony is at a level 9 hazard level. Most of the colony interior has been evacuated, but..."

"With the colony at a level 9 hazard level anyone who is not in a shelter will be unable to enter one now. We must avoid damaging the colony any more. Once we have finished loading supplies we will make way."

"Will that coordinator be piloting the Strike?"

"Yes, we have no choice. If he does not, then we can either surrender or scuttle the ship." Murrue said, before continuing in a tone that conveyed a slight reprimand, "And his name is Kira Yamato, Ensign."

OoOoOoOoOoOo

**Archangel Officers Quarters**

As Mu La Flaga and Lacus left him behind in the quarters that had been assigned to him, Kira stood staring at the now closed door for a few moments before walking over to one of the two beds. With a defeated plop, still holding his just issued uniforms to his chest, he sat down on the bed, as the full magnitude of what he had just gotten himself involved in began to hit him. Sitting down on his bed, his uniforms still held close to his chest, Kira wondered if he was really doing the right thing. He was after all just a college student who did not understand this war and yet he was now an officer in the Atlantic Federation. Though, the fact that he was the only Coordinator in the Atlantic Federation was not part of the puzzle that his thoughts currently were.

What that black haired girl, Lacus, had said did make sense and he couldn't deny his desire to protect his friends, her, and the children that she had collected. But even still, there had to be a better way. And then even more troubling was something that he thought that he had had seen moments before he had been knocked into the Strike by Ms. Murrue. He was sure that the ZAFT soldier who had taken the other MS was his best friend Athrun Zala. _'But that is impossible. Athrun wouldn't be fighting'_ Kira thought to himself. He could easily remember that day when his friend had left for the PLANTS and had given him Birdie. Athrun had left school and returned home as a result of the building tensions between the PLANTS and the nations of Earth. Kira was sure that there was just no way that the ZAFT soldier could have been Athrun, but even still he could not fully convince himself.

Laying down the bundle of clothing on his bed, Kira stood up so as to change into his uniform and to put the rest of the uniforms away. While he changed in the white uniform of OMNI, he couldn't help but think, _'But I am now fighting. So is it then so unreasonable that Athrun might be as well?'_ Those thoughts worried Kira quite a bit as that would mean that when he fought that he could very well be fighting against his best friend and he was not sure if he could do that. But if he didn't then he would be placing Lacus and the children at risk and he couldn't do that either.

"Why do there have to be wars?" Kira asked of the air as he let himself, partially dressed fall back to the bed, hating the concept of war even more. However, answers were not to be coming as exhaustion from his actions finally caught up with the young coordinator and he fell asleep.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

After having shown Kira to his quarters, Mu proceeded to escort Lacus to where the other civilians were being put up. As they walked, the two of them engaged in mundane small talk, which primarily focused on Mu's life. Every now and then Mu would ask Lacus a question about her own life, but each time she would deftly without him realizing it deflect the conversation back to his own life. Lacus was particularly interested in learning what Mu thought of Coordinators, not so much for her sake, but for Kira's. She had no desire to see her new friend used as some kind of weapon by people who despised him. She was sure that he would be crushed if such a thing happened. But in hearing that he did not care that Kira was a Coordinator her heart was buoyed.

"Well these next few rooms are the ones that we are assigning for you civilians to use while you are with us." Mu said as they finally reached the rooms.

"Thank you so very much for showing me the way." Lacus replied as Mu open the door.

"Lacus! Lacus!" some of the children cried as they caught site of her.

Hearing her name called, Lacus turned and saw the children running her way. Kneeling down to the ground, she reached out and gave each one of them a hug as they arrived.

Watching from the side, Mu smirked to himself while thinking, _'She really has a way with those kids. And, to think she was able to keep such a large number of them calm during the attack on the colony.'_

"Excuse me, but where is Kira?" Tolle asked as he walked over at a more relaxed pace than the kids.

Looking over at Tolle, Mu recognized him as the one who had first stood up in defense of Kira. _'Probably thinks that we have done something to Kira due to him being a Coordinator. That kid has some loyal friends.'_ Mu thought before replying, "He is settling into his new quarters."

"But why is he not here with us?" Miriallia who was standing right next to Tolle asked.

"Given his position as a mobile suit pilot, he has been given officer quarters."

"That is correct; we just came from Kira's quarters." Lacus said looking up from the children.

"What do you mean as a mobile suit pilot? I know he piloted that thing back in the colony, but that was then." The shortest of the group of boys asked.

Standing up from the children, Lacus said, "They don't have anyone else. Kira is the only one who can wield that sword. He will protect the innocent and those that he cares about even though he does not want to fight."

Realizing that that was the Kira that they knew his friends simply responded by softly saying "Kira."

As the group of them stood in their silence as they though about what Kira, Mir held on a little tighter to Tolle's arm as she herself thought of how Kira was always the one to bear the burden for the group. Whether it was helping them with their studies, being the first one to dive into their group projects, or now more importantly taking up arms to protect them, he never complained; instead bearing the burden with a smile as if it was nothing. _'I don't think I have ever appreciated how much of a friend Kira is. But is it is fair of us to ask for him to protect us, if we are not willing to help out as well?'_ Mir thought to herself. Coming to a decision, she looked over at Tolle and saw that he had also come to the same decision.

"Lieutenant, the ship is undermanned is it not?" Mir asked

"Yes, only a bare skeleton crew survived ZAFT's attack. We are just lucky that the ship is advanced as it is, as any other one of our ships would be unable to function with this small of a crew."

"In that case, we would like to help." Tolle said

"Yes, Kira is protecting us and we need to do our part to support him." Sai said as he stepped forward to join Mir and Tolle.

"Me too." Kuzzy said a few moments later as his desire to stay with the group outweighed his fear of getting more involved in the battle.

"You're all sure about this?" Mu asked. And while he was initially surprised by the request as he watched each of Kira's friends step forward, he realized that he shouldn't really have been that surprised. It was Kira's desire to protect them that was keeping him in the Strike and loyalty of that level had to run both ways. Then seeing their nods he said, "Well let's see about getting you some uniforms and after that we will head up to the bridge as I am sure that there are stations there that you can fill."

Through this exchange Lacus remained quite as she waged an internal struggle. As much as she was upset with what the ZAFT commander had done, she just could not bring herself to take this next step and to actively fight against her home. Supporting Kira was different her mind rationalized. But if the rest of Kira's friends were going to join up to support Kira, then shouldn't she as well?

"Don't worry about it Lacus, there are more ways to help then simply fighting." Mu said to Lacus as he saw the signs of then internal debate that was waging in her mind.

Hearing Mu speak, Lacus looked up at the Earth Alliance officer with confusion and hope both present on her face.

"The kid may be an exceptional pilot, but he is still a kid and he is going to need your love to come back to after the battles. These first ones are going to be hard on him, especially when the fact that he has taken another's life finally catches up with him. When it does you will need to be there to make sure that he does not loose himself. Just as you have already helped him to come to terms with the need to fight, you will need to help him come to terms with the need to kill. And while I can give him that pep talk, he will listen better if it comes from his girlfriend." Mu said while giving Lacus a wink.

Listening as Mu spoke, Lacus had to admit that his words made lots of sense and it was what she had planned on doing. She was just glad that he would not think less of her for just wanting to support Kira and not to join the fight. She was just about to thank Mu for his words when her mind processed the last bit he had said, causing her face to go bright red.

"But I'm not..." Lacus began embarrassed both by the Lieutenant's description of her and Kira's relationship as well as by her realization that with as much as she had been thinking about Kira that she might be developing a crush on him. Nowhere in her thoughts was the fact that she was engaged to Athrun Zala present as her true life still remained sequestered into a corner of her mind.

"Oh, sorry about that. It's just that the two of you looked like such a nice couple. But even if the two of you are not dating, the two of you have a connection and what I said still stands." Mu said realizing that he had jumped the gun. _'Though, now that I think about it, that girl doesn't really appear to be integrated with the rest of Kira's friends. I guess they must have just recently met.'_ Mu thought to himself.

_'She does seem like a good match for Kira and she obviously cares about him.'_ Miriallia thought to herself and in particular thinking about Lacus's actions when Kira was revealed to be a Coordinator. Then noticing that La Flaga and the others were starting to leave, she turned to follow them.

After watching them go, Lacus turned back to the children and realized that she also had a second job to do, to look after these kids. "Okay let's go get ourselves seated and play a game."

OoOoOoOoOoOo

**Kira's Quarters**

For Kira it seemed like he had only just fallen asleep when alarms began to blare across the ship. _'What is going on?'_ Kira thought as he groggily awoke. Sitting up in his bed, his confusion was increased even more by the unfamiliar surroundings. _'An Earth Force's uniform? Why am I...'_ Kira wondered as he took in how he was dressed before the memories of joining up so as to protect his friends on this ship finally came back.

"Kira Yamato to the flight deck." came Ensign Badgiruel's voice over the PA.

Knowing that he was being asked to go out and fight again, Kira's heart rebelled against him for a moment as he had no desire to be a soldier. He and his family lived here in Heliopolis purposely to avoid being part of this conflict between the Coordinators and the Naturals. But even as the thought of disobeying that request began to formulate itself, memories of why he had taken the controls of the Strike came to mind. His friends, the kids, and that girl needed his protection. And so with his course of action set, he grabbed his tunic from the other bed and headed out into the hall.

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**Starboard Catapult**

"Strike we will be outfitting you with the Sword Striker pack for this sortie." A familiar voice said over the radio.

"Miriallia?" Kira asked with obvious surprise in his voice.

"Yes, I am now the mobile suit and mobile armor coordinator for the Archangel." Mir replied.

"But why?"

"Because we can't let you carry this burden alone Kira. We are your friends and we are involved in this just as much as yourself. Now take care of yourself out there." Mir replied with a caring voice.

"Thanks." Kira replied now no longer feeling quite so bad about having to head out to fight. While he still hated the idea of fighting, somehow knowing that his friends had his back made it a little more bearable.

After performing the last of his preflight checks, Kira did not have a long wait before ZAFT's second assault began, an assault that was initiated with a heavy missile strike to the colony. Patched into the Archangel's sensors through the umbilical cords that connected him to the ship, Kira's expression hardened as he saw the destruction wrought by the ZAFT forces. _'Why couldn't they have come in through the hanger?'_ Kira thought to himself as he thought about the civilian shelters that had just been destroyed. Even though he himself had also punched a decent sized hole in the side of the colony with the HyperImpulse cannon and likely destroyed some of the shelters that had not been intentional, occurring only because he had not realized the power of the weapon that he had been wielding. Plus, that hole was only a fraction the size of what ZAFT had now just made.

As we watched the GINNS swarm in through the colony's wound, Kira's reluctance to fight evaporated. Priming the Strike's thrusters for launching, he reopened the channel that Mir had called him on. "Kira Yamato in the Strike launching."

Having already been told to launch the Strike as soon as ZAFT entered the colony, Mir opened the external hanger door and began to energize the starboard mass driver. Inside of the Strike, Kira watched as the colony became visible while the sides of the launch tube came to life. Then turning his attention to the launch indicator lights he watched as they one by one changed from amber to green and then as soon as the final indicator went green, he activated the launch sled. As he was accelerated down the catapult, Kira was glad that he was a Coordinator and not a Natural as did not think that he would have been able to withstand the multiple g's of acceleration that he was being subjected to otherwise. Thankfully, that acceleration was as short in duration as it was intense and within seconds Kira lurched forward ever so slightly, caught by his harness, as his MS left the ship and its magnetic acceleration field.

Leveling off from the launch, Kira began to check his radar readout while he absently activated the Phase Shift Armor and activated the macro for retrieval of the sword. Focusing in on the nearest MS, his targeting computer processed the sensor readings it was receiving and then after matching the suit, superimposed library data on top of the raw readings. The image that it displayed was that of a GINN outfitted with the distinctive ZAFT orange and white heavy missiles. However, Kira due to his previous lack of interest in the war failed to recognize those missiles for what they were; at least until he saw the MS that he was currently heading towards launch them. Then as they slowly began to accelerate away from the GINN, Kira angrily thought, _'Missiles! What do they think they are doing using missiles of that size in here?'_ knowing that more than a few of them would miss and hit the ground.

Beginning to fall prey to the rage that he was feeling over ZAFT's actions, Kira increased his thrust, rapidly closing the distance to the MS that had just launched its load of missiles. Twisting his MS as he passed by the missiles, he fired his CIWS cannons at them, destroying two of the four. But as much as his attention should have been exclusively on stopping those missiles for both the sake of the colony and the Archangel, his rage had instead clouded his mind and he was instead focused exclusively on that pilot. Twisting his suit back towards the enemy MS, which he was now in range of, he swung the anti-ship sword. With its beam edge, the sword easily sliced through the MS. Giving no pause in having taken out an enemy unit, Kira quickly identified the nearest MS that was still carrying its missiles and fired his afterburners.

The pilot of that second MS having heard his comrade's death yell over the radio suddenly felt fear as he watched the OMNI MS bear down on him. Until now every engagement he had been in, he had always had a distinct skill and equipment advantage over the pathetic Naturals. But now that safety net was gone and as he watched the Natural close in on him, his training broke down and he panicked. After first blindly firing his missile at the enemy MS, not that they had a chance of doing any damage, he attempted to fly away, not waiting for the missiles to fully leave their launchers. Those actions, however, were for naught as Kira's anti-ship sword was slicing down towards his cockpit before he had a chance to move more than three meters.

Fate, however, smiled on the hapless Coordinator pilot as the sword was brought up short just a meter from his suit. After having seen the Strike quickly dispatch the first MS and then make a beeline for a subsequent suit, Athrun had pushed his thrusters to their maximum so as to save his comrade. Now as he hung above the ground, having parried the Strike's attack with own of his own beam sabers, Athrun took a moment to stare at the Strike. As much as he did not want to admit it, he was now convinced that the pilot of this unit had to be friend Kira. While he had only gotten a bare glimpse of the one that he had thought was Kira back at the factory and it was highly unreasonable to expect Kira to be piloting a mobile suite much less one for the Earth Forces, there was just no way for that pilot to be a natural. The OS of these things was just far too screwed up.

As much as Athrun knew that he should just forget what he thought that he had seen, he could not just throw away his friendship. Kira had been his best friend growing up and Athrun could not let his kind hearted and soft spoken friend be taken advantage of as he was sure that the Atlantic Federation had to be doing. And so Athrun opened a channel, "Kira, Kira Yamato."

Hearing the voice of his friend, the need to fight left Kira's body and he simply hung there as he responded. "Athrun, Athrun Zala is that you. What are you doing here?"

"I might ask you the same Kira. How could you be fighting with them, fighting against your own kind?" Athrun asked anger over the death of his mother at the hands of those terrorists driving him to speak more harshly than he had intended.

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**Archangel CIC**

Noticing that the Strike was no longer moving and was now just hovering, Mir began to get worried. Bringing up the status displays for the Strike, she gave a sigh of relief when she saw that all of its systems were okay. _'But why isn't he doing anything? And there is ZAFT suit right in front of him.'_ Mir wondered to herself before opening a channel to the Strike. "Kira are you okay? What is going on?"

Hearing, the young girl's comments, Badgiruel momentarily directed her attention over to the MS/MA operator. "Is something wrong with the Strike?"

"I don't know; he has stopped moving."

"Then remind him that we are in the middle of a battle and that this ship will not survive unless he gets his mind back into it." Badgiruel stated, suspecting that being in combat was finally catching up with the untrained civilian. This was why she would have preferred an experience pilot like Lt La Flaga to be the one out there, but the captain had made her decision.

"Kira, please respond." Mir called again, but as she spoke her last word, her voice slipped slightly as the ship was rocked with heavy explosions from impacting missiles.

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**The Battlefield**

"Mir?" Kira replied back over the channel, the sound of her distress breaking him out of the trance that he had fallen into. Remembering the reason why he was piloting the Strike, Kira accelerated away from the Aegis under full military thrust while he replied back over the international channel to Athrun. "My friends are down there and I will not abandon them."

Seeing the Strike dive away, Athrun called out "Kira don't" as he proceeded to chase after the Strike.

In the game of chase that followed, with Athrun wanting to get Kira to stop so that he could convince Kira to come back with him, the Strike's ability to intercept any of the remaining GINN attacks was negated. And as a result, the Archangel was left to using it Gottfrieds in conjunction with its missiles for anti-MS warfare, substantially increasing the damage inflicted upon the colony. On board the Archangel, the crew could only helplessly watch as their stray shots as well as enemy shots that they successfully dodged impacted against either the ground or the central shaft of the colony. And while the limited shots that were fired from the Gottfrieds thankfully all managed to hit their intended targets, a good portion of the shot still continued on past the MS to impact against the colony.

Consequently, it was really only a matter of time before despite the best efforts of the Archangel's fire control officers that the exoskeleton of the colony was critically compromised. And within moments of the missile blast that provided the final blow to Heliopolis, the inertia of the colony's outer shell, which could no longer be restrained, began to rip the colony to shreds, causing huge gashes that open out into in the vacuum of space to appear in the ground. And, as inertia ripped the colony apart, a final set of instruction was sent by the colony's computer system to the thousands of shelters instructing them to fire their explosive bolts.

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**Heliopolis Debris Field**

Caught by the strong winds of escaping air, the Strike was pulled away from the ZAFT units and out into space. Disorientated, it took Kira a few moments to regain his bearings. Checking his threat display he did not see any immediate ZAFT units, but that did not mean too much between the high N-jammer emissions and all of the heat sources that surrounded his MS. _'They just destroyed the colony how could they do something like that?'_ Kira mentally yelled / asked himself. The glimmer of hope that he had been holding onto that everything would end up all right was now utterly shattered.

Storing the sword, Kira activated the various longer range sensors on the Strike. With his three previous battles occurring within the colony itself, he had only really needed the close in combat system active and that was primarily just for fine targeting use. But now adrift in the wreckage of the colony, Kira would need to rely entirely on them if he was to find his way back to the Archangel. With the amount of debris that had been generated he knew that he if he just used his eyes that he would never be able to find the Archangel before his oxygen supply ran out.

That thought reminded that it was good that he had thought to change into his pilot suit before launching this time. He guessed that he owed Ms. Murrue some thanks there as he only thought about using one of the Archangel's pilot suits because he was now technically a part of the crew. If their conversation had occurred after this mission, and he knew that he would still have ended up here even if he had not been a member of the crew yet, he was sure that he would be out here in his regular clothes. Of course as of now it was a moot point as the cockpit was still pressurized, but he even still he liked the idea of wearing a pressure suit now that he was in space.

Frowning as the systems failed to detect any sign of the Archangel; Kira took out the keyboard and began examining the sensor suite algorithms. _'I should have expected something like this. With how badly written the OS was there is no way that I should have expected the sensor package to be any better off.'_ Kira thought to himself as he began to correct the various errors. Then some minutes later as the system began to load his recoded sensor kernel, Kira allowed himself to relax for a moment. Picking up Birdie who had had brought into the Strike with him, Kira stroked a finger across the back of the metal construct. _'Athrun why? Why did you do this?'_ Kira asked himself.

"GAT X-105 Strike please respond. GAT X-105, Kira do you copy?" Mir's worried voice came across the radio as the system finished reconfiguring itself.

"This is Kira." Kira replied.

"Kira what happened? Are you okay?" a relieved Mir asked.

"I'm fine. There were bugs in the sensor algorithm that was preventing me from locating the Archangel and I only just finished reloading the system." Kira replied.

"Kira you are ordered to return. ZAFT forces are still active in the area and we need to be prepared for a second wave." Mir said after a pause during which time Badgiruel had relayed to her the orders concerning the Strike.

"Understood." Kira said with a nod towards the video screen. Then closing the channel he began to slowly maneuver his MS back towards the Archangel. With the large volume of debris that now littered space, Kira was forced to keep his velocity quite low so as to have sufficient time to react. If it had not been for the still extremely high N-jammer levels, he could have used his radar to quickly map the route back. But, as it was he could only map a few seconds of flight at a time.

Even though the trip back was hazardous and required him to go slowly, it did not, however, require his full attention. That freedom allowed Kira to also examine the other readings his sensors were reporting. In particular, he was checking to make sure that he was not about to stumble upon a ZAFT MS. He had no desire to fight right now and was actually a bit fearful of what he might do if he was confronted by one of those who had caused the collapse of his home and if that unlucky MS pilot was Athrun, Kira was sure that he would end up snapping.

_'What is that?'_ Kira thought as his system detected a beacon. Bringing up a more detailed display, he frowned as he realized that it was one of Heliopolis's escape capsules. _'It has been damaged. That is a level 2 distress signal and not the normal level 3 one that the others are emitting.'_ Kira thought to himself as he adjusted his course. So as to assist rescue crews, each of the colony shelter / escape capsules was outfitted with a three level alarm system. Normally they squawked a level 3 beacon. But if their propulsion or communication systems became damaged or expended, they would switch to a level 2 beacon, which instructed the rescue ships that the capsule was unable to maneuver or to perform docking operations without EVA assistance.

Consequently, while the other capsules would be able to travel to a rendezvous point for collection, this one would remain here in the wreckage of the colony. Normally that would not be much of a problem, but with all of the interference resulting from the aftermath of the battle there was a decent chance that it would be overlooked. That said, the life support system could support the capsules for quite a bit of time, assuming that it was not overloaded, which should allow it to be found during a more detailed inspection of the wreckage.

Even still, Kira decided to divert his course slightly so that he could make sure that there was nothing else wrong with it. Slowing flying a circuit around the capsule, once he arrived, as he carefully examine its exterior he was found himself to be amazed that it was only squawking a level 2 beacon. The exterior of the capsule was heavily damaged, especially in the region by where the life support systems were located. Deciding that he could not in good conscience leave it out here, Kira manipulated one of the hands of his MS to take hold of the pod. Then once he was securely attached to the pod, he fired his thrusters and resumed his trip back to the Archangel.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

**Archangel – Civilian Quarters**

As the battle unfolded in Heliopolis, Lacus had floated in the air as she watched unfolding battle on the room's monitor, which she had set to display external camera feeds. Each time the ship shook from an attack that breached its point defense systems, the children around her whimpered. Pulling them in close, she tried to do her best to keep them calm. But it was not an easy task, as she kept finding herself wanting to divert all of her attention to the battle and to watching a certain MS. Seeing Kira this time up against multiple suits she was afraid that she had sent him to his death.

Eventually, she had removed her pink Haro from an inner pocket of the light jacket that she had been wearing over her dress and brought it up to hold against her chest. Even though she had been instructed to leave her toy behind on the Silverwind, Lacus had been unable to do so. Since she had first received the little spherical robot as a gift from Athrun, she had always kept it close by. And while there wasn't supposed to be any real difference between this one and the others that she had, she still felt as if this pink one was different. Thinking about how Mr. Pink always seemed to be able to liven her spirits up when she felt down, Lacus decided to turn him on, mentally rationalizing to herself that _'No one here is going to know about these.'_ The reason for leaving them on the Silverwind had been incase a ZAFT agent opposed to the peace process had recognized them, something that no longer mattered. With that decided Lacus activated Mr. Pink and as watched the unit begin moving about the cabin and to examine each of the children, she giggled for the first time since this mess began.

Lacus's laughter turned out to be contagious as before long the children were also laughing along with her as they poked and prodded at the bouncing pink sphere, the battle outside forgotten. Unfortunately, the happiness was not to last long as only minutes later Lacus's eyes caught sight of the dust clouds that were being formed by the disintegration of Heliopolis's ground.

"No." Lacus whispered as her attention became fully riveted by the collapse. Sensing her agitation, the children broke away from playing with Haro to look at the monitor once again. That visual was quickly followed by violent shaking as the Archangel began to be buffeted by the escaping air. As the children watched their home vanish, the ones old enough to understand what was happening were terrified and their fear was quickly picked by the others. This time, however, Lacus was not able to help the children calm down as images from the news reports on the collapse of Julius 7 began to superimpose themselves on what was happening.

Only when the colony had become nothing more than an expanding cloud of debris did Lacus finally remember about the children. Feeling ashamed for having become so wrapped up in her own despair to have forgotten about them, she looked down at them and said, "Everything will be okay. Everyone else was in the life pods." But as hard as she had tried to make the words sound confident, they were still marked by her own despair. Thankfully, though, the children did not notice, focused as they were in their desire for reassurance and with Lacus as their only remaining pillar of stability, one crying child after another flung themselves at her. Letting them take a hold of her, Lacus did her best to hug them all while trying to calm them down.

Some time later, the silence that had fallen over the room as Lacus held the children was broken when the PA announced, "All hands secure from level 1 to level 2 combat stations."

Hearing that announcement, Lacus gave a sigh of relief, knowing that it meant that for at least the moment that ZAFT had stopped their attack. Lacus just hoped that maybe the shock over what they had done would cause the ZAFT commander to pull back. But she did not put too much weight on that hope. Then realizing that this meant that Kira should also be on his way back in, Lacus looked down at the children and said, "Why don't I go and bring Kira here?"

"He's the one protected us?" one of the children asked, connecting Kira's name to the red and blue MS.

"Yes." Lacus replied.

"'kay!" The children happily replied as the pulled away from Lacus, feeling happier and safer knowing that Kira was going to come see them.

Giving the children a smile so as to let them know that she would be right back, Lacus walked on out of the room and into the hall. However, instead of continuing on to the hanger deck, she instead walked over to the opposite wall and let her body slump against it, taking a moment to gather her strength.

When Lacus finally felt that she was strong enough to continue on, she stood back up. Then thinking, _'I just hope that he is okay.'_ Lacus continued on her way, knowing that she would feel extremely guilty if he had been hurt out there.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

**Mobile Suit Hanger**

Entering the hanger, Lacus was taken back by how much activity was going on. She had thought that with only one MS that there would not bee too much activity in here. Wondering what was going on and absently noting that it was not Kira's MS that was the center of attention, Lacus directed her attention on over. What she saw was a fairly large object that she quickly identified as a multi-person evacuation pod, obviously from Heliopolis. Now looking a bit more closely at the pod, she saw that its outside had been blackened in a fair number of locations, most likely having strayed a little too close to the battle. _'They were lucky that it was Kira who was out there.'_ Lacus thought to herself as she saw the damage, realizing why Kira had brought it on board, and believing that any other pilot would have likely have just left it adrift.

With the realization that a new group of refugees had been brought on board, Lacus's first impulse was to go offer her help. Even if she was not able to do more than show them a friendly face, she knew that it would help. However, she had another task, one that she could not delay. Watching the collapse of Heliopolis from within the confines of this ship had given her great sadness and guilt. And that was with knowing that none of her actions directly contributed it. What Kira, who had been directly involved in its collapse, must be feeling she had no idea. But she knew that she should not let his guilt crush him for it was her fault that he had been placed in that position.

While Lacus's entry into the hanger and her initial journey to the Strike had been unnoticed, she was finally noticed by Chief Murdoch as her path started to take her away from the escape module and everyone else. The Chief had been in the process of making some final arrangements for opening the module when Lacus caught his eye. Turning away from the other technician, he took a few steps towards Lacus while calling out, "Hey where do you think you are going?"

Turning to look, but not slowing down, Lacus replied "To see Kira." Her gentle voice carrying an authority that lets Murdoch know that this was not up to discussion, a determination that was reflected equally by her facial expressions.

_'It's the kid's girlfriend.'_ Murdoch thought as he placed the sound of her voice and determined face with that of the girl who had attempted to shield Kira with her body only a few hours earlier. Nodding in resigned understanding, Murdoch said. "Okay." while thinking _'It's not like I have the manpower to restrain her anyways. Plus with what we are asking of the kid, might as well let him have a little leeway.'_ With that taken care of, Murdoch was about to turn back to the escape pod when his thoughts of their limited manpower brought another issues to mind and so he called out, "Oh and could you tell the kid that I am going to need him to maintain his own suit. As short staffed as we are, especially with getting the Moebius Zero repaired, I don't have any technicians that I can assign to his suit."

Still looking back at Murdoch, Lacus replied "I understand." as she launched herself up towards the cockpit of the Strike.

The timing of her leap was quite opportune, for just as Lacus was arriving at the Strike, Kira was opening the cockpit. Smiling a small smile with her fortuitous timing, Lacus grabbed a hold of the side of the cockpit so as to arrest her forward motion. But as Lacus long black hair floated on past her face, she found that she did not know what to say. She wanted to tell Kira that everything would be okay, but for some reason those words felt hollow right now.

For Kira as he looked up after releasing his restraining harness he was quite surprised to find Lacus floating there outside of his cockpit, as he had turned off his external cameras early on in the process of shutting down the Gundam. Seeing her here lifted for a moment the weight he was feeling and so as he removed his helmet he tried to force a smile onto his face as he said, "Hey there."

Lacus, however, was not fooled by his forced smile. But even as she realized that he was hurting, something told her that right now was not the right time to call him on it. Glancing down towards the escape pod for a moment, she saw how many people were here in the hanger at the moment and thought, _'No not now. There are too many people here. Later when he has some privacy, I will see about healing his heart.'_ And so Lacus simply replied, "Hi. Come let's get you changed and then you can come see the children. They all want to see you."

"I would like that." Kira replied with sincerity in his voice, trying to bury his memories from the battle with the smiling faces of the children.

But as Kira prepared to push off from the Strike he remembered Birdie, who he had brought with him into the Strike. Pausing for a moment, Kira proceeded to reach back inside, quickly gathering up Birdie. While she was confused when Kira suddenly reached back into the Strike, Lacus couldn't help but to smile when she saw him return with a mechanical bird. For some reason seeing that he had brought his own toy with him into battle made her feel a little closer to him and less guilty about bringing Haro with her. Speaking of which, she hoped that the little robot was behaving itself and remaining with the children instead of chasing after her. She knew that she really should have either turned it off or made sure that it was following her when she came down here. But when she had left the room all she could think of was the collapse of Heliopolis and Kira.

"This is Birdie; a good friend of mine gave him to me before he had to leave." Kira explained as he held the bird out for Lacus to see.

"He's beautiful." Lacus said as she reached out her right hand to pet the back of the bird. And as she did so, she also filed away the hurt she had felt in his voice when Kira mentioned his good friend. _'Something must have happened between the two of them.'_ Lacus thought already building an unfavorable mental image of this apparent friend. The thought of a friend hurting Kira's feelings also made Lacus feel slightly guilty, though, she was not sure why.

"Well let's go see those children." Kira said, breaking Lacus away from her thoughts. Then grabbing a hold of her elbow, he pushed off against the frame and down towards the escape pod. While getting out of the pilot suit and taking a shower sounded really good right now, he also wanted to take a look at those he had rescued first. While it was not much, he thought that maybe this little bit would help sooth his soul over what he had caused to happen.

They were about halfway to the escape pod when Birdie suddenly stirred to life and flew out of Kira's hands causing Kira to fumble in an attempt to catch the mechanical bird while calling out, "Birdie wait."

In spite of being knocked into a spin as a result of Kira's efforts to reclaim his wayward toy, Lacus couldn't help but giggle. His inability to get his bird to behave was something that she faced nearly everyday with her herd of Haros. _'Maybe that is why Athrun gave them to me, to watch me fumble around trying to get them to behave.'_ Lacus thought to herself, which just made her smile even more. While under different circumstances that thought might have made her cross, right now as she grabbed a hold of Kira to stop her own spinning, the idea of bringing a little laughter even if she was the victim sounded like a good idea. _'Too bad I didn't bring all of my Haros. The kids would have loved them.'_

OoOoOoOoOoOo

With some help from an Earth Forces shoulder, Flay climbed on out of the escape capsule. Looking around at her surroundings, she felt the fear she had been feeling earlier return as she realized that she was on a warship – the only explanation for all of the uniformed soldiers that she was seeing.

"Birdie, Birdie." a mechanical voice chirped drawing her attention.

Turning her attention to that voice, Flay watched in surprise as a mechanical bird landed on her shoulder. Looking more closely at the bird, she realized that the bird looked familiar, she was sure that it belonged to one Sai's friends. _'Maybe Sai is here, at least that friend must be. Kira I think it was.'_ Flay thought to herself, no longer feeling quite so scared. Even if Kira was the only one of Sai's group that was here, she knew that she would feel a whole lot safer if with even just one other person that she knew.

Now looking around the hanger a second time, Flay looked more closely trying to figure out where Kira may be. And when she finally did spot him up in the air, she launched herself towards him, neither noticing what he was wearing or that there was someone else with him.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

Quickly realizing that it was useless to try to recover Birdie, at least until they reached the ground, Kira turned his attention to synchronizing his and Lacus's tumbling. Realizing that he probably wouldn't be able to fully eliminate their spinning, he instead focused on bringing their spin into something manageable. In particular, he could retard the faster spin that he had given Lacus by coupling his motion to hers.

Once Kira had pulled Lacus in tight and slowed their spinning, Lacus replied, "Thanks." not noticing how close he was holding her.

"No problem." Kira replied with a smile as he slowly began to release Lacus. Now looking forward so as to make sure that they did not smack into the deck, he only now became aware of the red haired girl who was flying their way.

"Wha..." Kira started to say but was cut off when Flay impacted against his chest sending him spinning again.

The impact besides sending Kira spinning, flung Lacus off to the side and she would have been ejected away if not for her quick thinking in grabbing a hold of Kira's pilot suit. However, only one of her hands had been to get a strong enough grip to withstand the yank that came when her ejection trajectory was arrested. But thankfully that was all that was needed.

"You're, you're Kira. One of Sai's friends aren't you." The still quite fearful Flay asked as she looked up at Kira.

"Yes I am, and you are Flay, Sai's fiancé right?" Kira said as he continued to hold the slightly trembling girl.

Nodding in response, Flay began to really look around. Feeling safe in fiancé's friend's arms, Flay felt as if everything would be alright. She had found someone that she knew. But that sense of security vanished when their tumbling brought the Strike into her field of view. _'A mobile suit! Then this is a ZAFT ship with Coordinators.'_ Flay thought with a shiver.

"We are on a ZAFT ship aren't we?" Flay whispered to Kira, concern obvious in her voice.

"No this in an Earth Force vessel." Kira replied.

"Don't lie to me Kira. The Earth Alliance doesn't have any mobile suits." Flay said correcting Kira with a voice that said that she was not in the mood for any games.

"Kira is telling the truth. This is not one of those ZAFT vessels that attack Heliopolis." Lacus replied from where she had managed to pull herself to Kira's back.

_'Lacus.'_ Kira thought with concern as he heard the subtle bitterness in her voice when she spoke of ZAFT. While he was upset that ZAFT had attacked the colony he really did not harbor them any ill will. _'And what will she think when she learns that one of them was my best friend. Will she think that I am like them?'_ Kira wondered.

For her part Flay was thinking _'But when did the Earth Alliance start using mobile suits?'_ But, knowing that she would not learn that answer to that question, she instead decided to relax in the knowledge that she was now onboard an Earth Alliance ship and not the prisoner of Coordinators.

When Kira finally managed to get the three of them safely back to the ground after a tumbling process that involved them bouncing off a fair number of walls in the hanger, Flay stepped back to give her thanks. But as she stepped away from him, she finally noticed what he was wearing and so asked instead, "Kira why are you wearing that outfit?"

"Kira is the pilot of the mobile suit." Lacus replied for Kira.

"But why you?" Flay asked, suddenly feeling less safe in learning that the Earth Forces had apparently pressed one of Sai's friends into service. _They wouldn't do that to me would they? _Flay worriedly thought, not sure if her father's name would keep her out of the fight should they want to draft her as well.

"Because he has the ability to use that sword to protect those that he cares for." Lacus said, once again answering for Kira.

"Come let's take you down to the cafeteria. Did you know that Sai is onboard?" Kira asked as he caught Lacus's eyes and gave her a smile of thanks for answering Flay's questions for him.

Returning his smile with her own, Lacus followed the two of them out of the hanger pleased to be able to do what she could to help Kira.

As the threesome left the hanger, their departure had been watched by a fair number of the Earth Force personnel who had been the hanger. Flay's unexpected action of launching herself up to Kira, having drawn practically everybody's attention. "That kid sure has a way with girls. First that black haired one and now that red haired one as well. And neither one seemed to be at all jealous of the other." Murdoch commented with a laugh, which was met with much agreement from amongst the others that had been watching.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

After waiting for Kira to get changed out of his flight suit, Kira, Lacus, and Flay of them had headed off to the mess hall. They headed there so that Kira could get something to drink as well as because that was where the just rescued civilians were to be held while the crew got ready to process them. Sitting around one of the tables while Kira drank a concoction that was supposed to help replenish his electrolytes and restore energy the three of them chatted as they got to know each other. And, while Kira and Flay had already known each other, they really were more of acquaintances and so did not know each other very well. Though, once Kira finished his drink, he and Lacus took their leave, both wanting to check on the children. As they left so as to return to Lacus's quarters, they told Flay that they would let Sai know that she was onboard.

Opening the door, Kira was did even make it past the threshold before the kids began to pile on him while yelling "Kira!" None of them at all appeared upset by how long it took Lacus to return with Kira and if anything the wait appeared to have only made them more hyper for when Kira finally entered. Though, in their overly enthusiastic attempts to leap at Kira quite a large number of the kids ended up tumbling off in directions that would take them no where near him. However, they did not have to flail for long in having missed Kira before Lacus, who had managed to slip in the room ahead of Kira, caught them and then with a smile sent each of the wayward kids sailing on towards Kira.

Laughing a little bit as a result of their infectious energy, Kira after some time began to carefully set the kids down on the ground. Then once he had dislodged the final child he knelt down so that he was at eye level with them and began to answer the thousand and one questions that each of them was also bombarding him with. From her position in the now empty room, Lacus felt content and happy for the moment as well. Then turning around, she walked over to the communication console that was in the room so that she could relay the good news about Sai's fiancé.

"Sorry to bother you, but I thought that you should know that one of the civilians that Kira rescued is Sai's fiancé. She is currently in the mess hall." Lacus said as the connection was established with the bridge.

"Thank you Ms. Sagara, I will let Mr. Argyle know." Badgiruel replied. Then noticing what looked to be a blue pilot uniform in the distance of the video, she added, "Is Mr. Yamato with you?"

"Yes he is. Would you like me to get him for you?" Lacus replied.

"No, that is not necessary. Please let him know that for the moment that we appear to be free of the ZAFT fleet and that I suggest that he use this time to rest."

"I will do. And, thank you again." Lacus politely replied before turning back to Kira and the kids. Walking up behind the kids she watched Kira for a few moments as he tried to help some of the younger kids learn how to maneuver a little better in the ship's weightless environment. Given their young ages, most of the kids had yet to receive any instructions on how to move around in a zero-g environment. That is not to say that the adults in Heliopolis would be on average much better, as few people visited the low or zero gravity sections of the station in their daily life. Kira and his friends were only as good as they were because of their involvement in the robotics courses they were taking, which occasionally had them working outside of the colony for some of their projects.

But as interesting as learning how to "fly" in space was for the kids, they soon began to get hungry and thirsty, as after all it had been a while since they had first come aboard the ship. After quickly deciding that a field trip to the mess hall was in order, unless they wanted to have to deal with unhappy kids, Kira and Lacus began the process of herding the thirty-two children through the corridors of the ship. As they walked, Lacus took the lead and Kira brought up of the rear so as to catch anyone who lost their footing and began floating about aimlessly.

Entering into the mess hall and noticing Flay and Sai off in one corner talking, Kira said, "It looks like they let Sai come down to see Flay."

"Yes, and I am sure that his presence will help her a lot." Lacus said as she waved over to Sai and Flay. But instead of heading over to join them, as she figured that the two of them might want to be alone for the moment given that they were seated off in a corner away from everyone else, Lacus directed her posse to a different table. Then as she the kids began to get themselves settled, she said to Kira, "I am going to go see if they have anything for the kids."

"Ok." Kira replied before turning his attention to making sure that all of the kids stayed seated around the table.

The arrival of Kira, Lacus, and the kids was noticed by just about all of the civilians in the room, as it is kind of hard to miss the arrival of good sized number of children given how much noise they tend to make. Initially, the civilians just watched as Kira settled the kids at the table, unsure of what to make of Kira. While many of them were interested in the kids, they were also wary with Kira apparently being in the military. But by the time that Kira finished getting the last of the kids seated; one of the civilians had decided to approach Kira having recognized his uniform as that of an OMNI pilot.

"Were you the one who brought in our pod?" the civilian asked.

Looking up, Kira was surprised to see that the mess hall was quite filled. Other than identifying Sai and Flay in the mess hall he had not taken notice of everyone else in the room, his attention having been focused entirely on making sure that he did not loose track of any of the kids, which when you add in the vertical direction gets quite tough. Though now as he saw how full the room was he thought, _'Guess, it does make sense that they would put them here while they get ready to process them. The mess hall is large enough for them all.'_ Then replying, he said, "Yes I was."

"Then we owe you our thanks. I overheard one of the technicians discussing how badly busted our propulsion system was." The man replied, which was met with murmurs of agreement from some of the others. Though, there were also quite a few who gave Kira a look that said that even though he saved them, they still blamed him for what had happened.

"Was there a second damaged pod?" A lady asked.

"No, they were caught out in the open during the fighting. And the Archangel was the only place that Lacus and I could bring them." Kira replied, nodding over towards Lacus who had just about returned to the table and was carrying a tray containing a pitcher of bug juice, cups, and some crackers. Knowing that Lacus would need some help, Kira gave the civilians a smile before turning his attention to the table.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

Some time later, Kira and Lacus were joined by the rest of Kira's friends as they came off their shift. The group quickly gathered around Kira, Lacus, Sai, and Flay, with Sai and Flay having joined them fifteen minutes earlier. While Kira was happy to see his friends again and they were all quick to know that they appreciated what he was doing for them, Kira quickly began to find his body tiring. And, so after the third time in which he had lost track of the conversation, Kira stood and took his leave.

Watching Kira leave, Lacus turned to Miriallia and asked, "Miriallia, could I impose on you to look after the children for me for a little bit?"

"No problem, we would love to look after them for you." Mir replied realizing that Lacus wanted to go after Kira. She was of a similar mindset to that of the Lieutenant in realizing that Lacus and Kira had a connection. And as such, she planned to do everything that she could to help the two of them find happiness with each other. Kira was such a good friend to them that both she and Tolle felt that it was their obligation to help him out as much as they could, whether that meant joining the war to assist him, defending him against those who were prejudiced against Coordinators, or hooking him up with Lacus.

As Kira walked back to his quarters, the emotions that he had buried since his return to the Archangel began to resurface. And, as they resurfaced they were in some ways worsened by the goodtime he had been having with his friends and the kids, as he did not feel that he deserved any laughter. As lost as he was in those emotions, he barely noticed when Lacus joined up with him, not noticing how quickly she arrived or that her breathing was a little heavier from her brisk walk to catch up.

The two of them made the trip back to his quarters in silence. Kira kept his silence because he did not feel like speaking and Lacus because she knew that know was not yet the time. Then arriving at his quarters, Lacus followed Kira right on in, not giving him the opportunity to even think about shutting the door. Realizing that Lacus had followed him on in, Kira gave Lacus a questioning look that also conveyed his downtrodden emotions.

"Kira look at me." Lacus said in a firm voice before Kira could ask her to leave. Then once she had his undivided attention, she continued with, "You are not at fault for what happened to Heliopolis."

However, as much as Kira wanted to believe Lacus, all that he could see in his mind was the collapse of Heliopolis. But as his mind's eye replayed the tragedy it combined the first and last battles together so that he was fighting on the ground with his friends out in the open when the colony collapsed. One by one he could see the little kids pulled screaming into the cold hard vacuum of space and then once they were all killed he watched as Lacus struggled with her face contorted in intense pain to pull breaths that were not to come.

Seeing that her words had no effect, Lacus stepped the rest of the way into the room closing the door behind her. Now walking over to Kira, she pushed herself off the ground. Then once her chest was at Kira's head level she reached out and pulled him into a hug. Lost as he was in his personal horrors, Kira never noticed being pulled off the ground. Then once she had Adjusted her hold so that Kira rested gently against her chest, Lacus began to comfort him by gently rubbing his back while softly speaking as the two of them floated in the middle of the room.

"Kira, you are a hero. If it had not been for you I, your friends, and all of the children would now be dead. You saved us, remember that. And even though you fight you are not like the others. You fight to protect. Those ZAFT pilots only sought to destroy." Lacus said in a soothing tone, with her own personal feelings of the situation carefully hidden away.

While not so much hearing what was said, but the intent behind them, Kira finally let the wall he had built against his own emotions crumble. Returning, Lacus's hug with his own embrace as he held onto as if she were a life raft, Kira began to cry. But even as much as he wanted to give and let Lacus wipe away the pain, he knew that he did not deserve that comfort. She was offering him comfort not because he deserved it, but because she didn't realize that he was the same as those who had attacked Heliopolis. After all one of them was his best friend who had once also abhorred fighting and so he himself couldn't be all that different could he.

"But I am like them. One of them, he's my best friend, the one who gave me Birdie. If Athrun could, then I will as well." Kira said once he had regained enough composure to speak between his sobs.

Lacus, though, had expected for Kira to try to distance himself from her, to push away the comfort that she was offering. She had come in here knowing that it would be an uphill battle for her to convince him that he deserved her comfort and that it was also a battle that she could not let herself loose. "No you are not. You have a gentle heart, you could never become like those who attacked the colony." Lacus replied her voice as gentle as before; though internally her emotions were now in turmoil. _'Athrun, it can't be him can it? But Athrun is not a common name and that operation had to have included a fair number of red coats. And, it can't be just a coincidence that the one who gave him Birdie is also named Athrun.'_

"But..." Kira protested.

"No buts Kira." Lacus replied this time with a stern tone, whose effect was ruined a moment later when she giggled.

Hearing Lacus's giggle, Kira lifted his head and looked up into her face, which was scrunched up as she tried to look serious in spite of her giggles. Smiling now himself, Kira noted to himself how cute she looked like that.

"There now that is better." Lacus replied as she saw the smile cross Kira's face. Then unwrapping from Kira, she said, "Now, why don't you see about getting some sleep.

Kira nodded his understanding and began to turn towards his bed. However, he stopped midway through the turn to look back at Lacus. He opened his mouth to speak, but then closed as he thought better of the request that he was about to ask and feeling ashamed for trying to take advantage of her concern like that.

Lacus, though, had a feeling as to what the unasked question was and she had no problem granting it. "Don't worry Kira I will remain until you fall asleep." Then seeing that Kira was about to object, she continued with, "It is no problem, you just worry about getting some sleep."

"Thank you." Kira replied before heading over to his bed and crawling underneath the covers, not bothering to get undressed. He was both too exhausted to worry about that and there was also the embarrassment issue with Lacus being present in the room.

For her part, Lacus walked over the spare bed. Normally an ensign would not rate a private room and as such he had been assigned to a double. However, due to how understaffed the ship was all of the officers ended up effectively getting their own personal rooms. The same could not be said for the enlisted crew, but even in their case their rooms were only at about 50 occupancy and there was no need to even consider the possibility of hot bunking, not that that was supposed to be needed on an Archangel class ship except in unusual circumstances.

After watching Kira toss and turn for a few moments, Lacus unconsciously began to sing a soft tune to help him fall asleep. If she had been thinking more about the future she might have realized that singing might not be the best thing to do as it would help someone link her to her true identity, which would be even easier to do when the dye in her hair began to wash out. But for now Lacus was still in the present and the recent past and even if she was thinking about protecting her identity, here in Kira's quarters she would still have sung.

Within minutes her song quickly had the desired effect on Kira, allowing him to slip into a restful slumber. She, however, did not stop singing, as she now sung to sooth her own troubled heart. For as much it had to hurt Kira to be fighting his best friend it hurt Lacus just as much to learn that her fiancé was one of the ones who had attacked this colony. She had thought Athrun better than that, but now she did not know what to think.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

Some time later after Kira had fallen into a deep sleep, Lacus quietly left the brown haired boy's quarters. She had remained there for a while even after finishing her song, just watching him. In watching him like that she had felt her resolve around her decision to stand by his side harden. She knew that many would not understand her actions, how she could forsake her homeland like this, but for Kira's innocence it was worth it.

Coming to a stop in front of a door, Lacus was surprised to find that her feet had brought her back to the hanger deck instead of her quarters. Pausing there for a moment, she remembered that she had forgotten to give the Chief's instructions to Kira. _Even still he needs to his rest. _Lacus thought to herself, rationalizing why it was better that Kira was not here working on his suit. However, as much as that might be the case, his MS still needed to be looked after and as much as Lacus might hope that seeing Heliopolis collapse would bring Athrun and the others to their senses, she still knew in her heart that they would just blame the Naturals for what happened.

Lacus did not want to feel so negative towards her fiancé, but she just found herself having trouble seeing him in the same light anymore. She knew that she was not being far. But after what had happened on Heliopolis, she just was not yet ready to forgive and forget.

_The maintenance still needs to be done. _Lacus thought to herself before opening the door and walking on into the hanger. Coming to a stop in front of the Strike, she looked up at the machine, which stood high above her. Now in its powered down state it actually looked more deadly than it did when Kira was piloting it back in Heliopolis, as if its soul had been removed.

"What's a pretty miss like you doing in here?" Murdoch asked as he came up beside Lacus.

Startled a bit by his appearance for she had become a little lost in her thoughts as she looked up at the Strike, Lacus spoke without turning. "You said that Kira would need to do his own maintenance. However he needs his sleep."

"And, so you plan to do it for him?" Murdoch asked in response.

Now turning to face Murdoch, Lacus replied again with that steal of determination in her voice, "Yes. It is the least I can do after asking him to do that which hurts his heart to do."

Smiling, Murdoch placed a hand down on Lacus's shoulder and replied, "Well then why don't we find you a better set of clothes for this then? A pretty dress like yours is too nice for playing around with equipment. I am sure that we can find a set of coveralls in your size." He wasn't sure how helpful she would be given that she looked too delicate to have any experience fixing things, but as an indication of how badly off they were he knew that even if she couldn't do anything more than clean the camera lenses she would be a big help.

"Thank you." Lacus replied as Murdoch led her out of the hanger.

"We'll also need to get you set up with where the tools are located. And while I am sure neither you nor the kid have any experience with maintaining mobile suits, we are not much better off than you. However, we do have the good fortune of having the maintenance files for the Strike." Murdoch said as they walked down the hall

OoOoOoOoOoOo

After changing, Lacus and Murdoch came across La Flaga during their return to the hanger.

"You and the kid doing some maintenance work on the Strike?" Mu asked as he noticed what Lacus was wearing, though he was puzzled for a moment by the kid's absence. _'Probably didn't bother to change, but she definitely needed to change her clothing.'_ Mu thought to himself, rationalizing why Kira was not with Lacus and Murdoch as after all he had no problem with tinkering with his mobile armor while still wearing his whites.

"Actually it is just me, Kira is resting." Lacus replied with just a slight bit of shyness in her voice. While there had been no shyness when she had told the chief of her desire to work on the strike, now in speaking with the one other pilot on board some shyness had crept into her voice over her desire to have him approve of what she was going to be doing.

Smiling in response to Lacus's unspoken question, Mu replied with his typical upbeat tone, "I was worried that he would not be able to get any rest. This silent run business can be quite stressful. I have known too many rookies to get let themselves get all wound up." And, then lowering his voice slightly he continued a little more seriously with, "And, I am sure that you made sure that he was able to get his rest." which he ended with a wink and another smile.

Blushing ever so slightly, Lacus replied, "He is resting peacefully."

"Good to hear it." Mu replied. Then turning his attention to Murdoch, he said, "So what is the status of my Moebius Zero? We have the Le Creuset team after us and I don't care how good the kid is, he is going to need backup out there."

_'Le Creuset?!'_ Lacus's mind yelled at her as she heard Mu's words. Feeling herself fall into a pit of despair over that name, she wondered how they could survive when the hero the battle of Yggdrasil was against them. _'What have I done, I am sending Kira to his death.'_

"Don't worry little princess. Le Creuset may have a reputation, but your friend is quickly building one of his own. And I am known as the Hawk of Endymion, so don't worry we will make it out of this alive." Mu said as he saw the effect that his words unintentionally had on Lacus. _'Doesn't surprise me that the civilians in Orb would be familiar with Le Creuset as after all that was a very significant battle and they don't have the propaganda machine attempting to minimize it.'_ Mu thought, coming to the wrong conclusion as to how Lacus knew about Le Creuset. "There that is better." Mu said as he saw Lacus begin to pull herself out of her despair. "Just remember that what ever you do that you don't let the kid see you like that. As long as he thinks that we can survive, we have a chance." And then with that the three of them continued onwards to the hanger with Mu and Murdoch discussing the status of the Moebius Zero.


	3. Fear

**Chapter 3: Fear**

**Archangel - Hanger Deck**

"This is going to be a relief to all of us." Mu said to Murdoch as he finished verifying the repairs to the Moebius Zero. "While I would like to think that we have given our ZAFT pursuers the slip with this silent run trick, we are up against Le Creuset, which means that we only have the illusion of having gotten the better of him while he sets up his next trap."

"Le Creuset you say?" Murdoch replied, having heard of the man's reputation.

"Yeah, unfortunately, that is who we are up against. ZAFT may have sent a small strike force, but they obviously made sure to send their best." Mu replied as he climbed out of the cockpit. "Well I better go tell the Captain the good news." _'God knows that we need every little bit that we can get.'_

"Right then Lieutenant," Murdoch replied as he turned back to his men and began directing those that had been working on the Moebius to other items that needed to be addressed and there were lots of those. The ship had after all only just been launched, which under normal circumstances would have been followed by at least one day of top to bottom checks to make sure that all of the systems were operating properly after the cold start. But, of course, this was no normal launch. No, it was both the first launch of the ship, the first of its class, which would typically require at least a week of shake down, and the ship had been launched with over two thirds of the system startup checklist discarded including many of the important hold times to allow for the systems to equilibrate. Already the men he had dispatched to look at the engines had found dozens of issues. Thankfully, so far they were all minor items, such as elements being out of calibration or timings being slightly off. However, that did not reduce the importance of those checks, as there could easily just have been a misalignment in the fusion chambers, something that could lead to a reactor shutdown at best.

While the chief was moving to focus all of his attention on the ship and its engines, Mu was walking across the hanger and as he did so, he began to give thought to the inevitable battle that they would have to fight before they reached Artemis. At least, now with the Moebius Zero back in action, they had a trump card that they could use against their pursuers. The pursuing ZAFT forces would not expect the Archangel to have any deployable craft other than the Strike and so, if he played to that expectation, he would have an opportunity to get a free shot in with the Zero. While it would be nice to get a critical hit in on one of those trailing ships, Mu had no illusions that he would get that lucky. However, that was not to say that damaging one of them would not be of benefit, especially if he could leave it open for a follow up shot from the Archangel's main batteries.

Thinking about that option some more, Mu said,_'Yes that could definitely work,'_ to himself as the outline of a plan began to solidify in his mind. Further thought, however, was sidetracked when he heard an unexpected soft grunt. It was not so much the grunt that grabbed his attention, but the delicate nature of it and so he turned to and looked off to his right. In so doing he noticed for the first time that the Strike had been rotated horizontally and lowered to the ground, which prompted a thought of _'What the? I didn't know that the exoskeletons could be lowered like that.'_ However, even as that question crossed his mind, the answer was provided to him as he remembered his original briefing for this mission. _'Oh of course, that would be a necessity. Can't really expect to be able to float in mid-air when they are down on Earth.'_ With that question answered and the Strike having caught his attention, Mu decided to go check on the little miss, who he now realized had been the source of that soft grunt.

Walking over to the Strike, Mu took in the various items that Lacus had strewn about both on the ground, such as various pages of the Strike's Technical Manual that appeared to be actually attached to the ground, and left floating about in the general vicinity. Then as he arrived at the Strike he turned his attention to locating Lacus, whose legs he found poking out from under the unit. Chuckling at the sight, Mu asked, "Hey, how you doing?"

Focused as she was in her work, Lacus had missed Mu's approach and so his comment caught her completely off guard. However, years of performing had taught her control of her emotions and so she was able to hide all outward signs of her surprise. Instead, she put down the tools that she was working with and pushed herself on out. Standing up once she was clear of the Strike, she said, "I think I am finally starting to get a hang of it." Then noticing the odd look that the Lieutenant was giving her, she added, "I had a slight mishap with one of the fluid reservoirs earlier on," which explained why her face and a good portion of her coveralls were covered in grease.

Laughing at Lacus's explanation, Mu with a large smile replied, "Well, I guess the other deck hands won't be able to give you any grief over not having any experience after today. Now you're as much a grease monkey as the rest of them."

Lacus simply smiled in response, glad that the Lieutenant did not think less of her for her mishap.

"However, you will want to be more careful in the future," Mu said, his voice turning more serious. "Some of those reservoirs can be under a fair bit a pressure, even more so if you are servicing the Strike shortly after it returns. And, while this time you just got dirty, some of those fluids can get quite hot when the unit is in operation and I don't want you getting hurt."

"I understand." Lacus said, some of her earlier enthusiasm dropping.

"Now don't get me wrong. You did well here and the kid is very lucky to have you as his girlfriend; actually, I think I might be a little jealous." Mu said recognizing the slight mood shift with Ms. Sagara's response. He knew that if they wanted to make it out of this mess alive, then they had to keep the kid happy and by extension that included the little miss as well. She was the one who had convinced the kid to fight and Mu was sure that if she was to feel isolated by the crew that the kid's willingness to help them out would quickly vanish. Unfortunately, he was sure that there were probably a number of the crew who did not realize the precarious balance that they were in, including the acting XO. After all, this was not something that was taught in boot camp or in officer training. No, they were in one of those one in a million situations where all of your training left you with was being able to do nothing more than to admit failure and to scuttle the ship. Consequently, if you wanted to succeed, then you had to improvise and hope for luck, so as to make the impossible possible.

Blushing slightly at Mu's statement, Lacus replied, "We only just met today."

"In that case, it is only a matter of time. After all, what pilot in his right mind could resist someone as beautiful and kind as you, especially when you take such good care of their mobile suit," Mu replied, causing Lacus to blush very brightly this time. "Well I better let you get back to work. I just wanted to make sure that everything was going okay for you. Maintaining the mobile suit while the kid rests is a big help to him and us, and he does need his rest."

"Thank you," Lacus replied

"You're welcome. And oh, before I leave you, you should know that we are about sixty minutes from Artemis, which means that I expect Le Creuset to make his move in about thirty minutes."

"Kira is going to have to fight again." It wasn't a question; Lacus knew that he was the ship's only real hope for survival, and she knew what going into battle again implied.

"I'm afraid so, but I am sure that you will have the Strike all ready for him by then," Mu said before turning and heading on out of the hanger.

Watching La Flaga go, Lacus's thoughts centered on Kira being forced to fight again and how she wished that he could stay here safe and sound in the ship. Of course, the only reason it was safe to be in the ship was because he was out there protecting it and if he was to keep the ship safe, then she would need to make sure that the Strike was ready for him when he needed it. Therefore in turning her attention back to the Strike, she knew that she needed to pick up her pace. A basic turnaround of the Strike was supposed to take a little under thirty minutes and while she had been at it for a while now, she was really only effectively a few minutes into it - having spent most of the time just learning how to do anything.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

"Attention all hands, the ship is now entering into Level 2 combat stations. Pilots to their machines," Ensign Badgiruel announced over the PA system twenty five minutes after Mu had left Lacus behind in the hanger.

Engrossed as Lacus was in her work on the Strike, the sudden noise of the announcement startled her. However, unlike when La Flaga had surprised her by his sudden presence, this time she was not able to fully suppress her reaction, the anxiety that was spawned by the realization that they were about to go into battle again being more than she could handle. Consequently, she needed to take a few moments to calm her racing heart, to get her breathing back under control, and to shove her fears out of her mind before she could turn back to making the final preparations to the Strike.

_'It's a good __thing__ that I finally got the hang of what I was __doing.'_ Lacus thought to herself as picked up the fastener that she had dropped, realizing that she had completed the turn around on the Strike with no time to spare. Then with the fastener in hand, she reached up and finished securing the last of the open access panels on the Strike.

Once the panel was secured, Lacus carefully worked her way out from under the mobile suit, which was not too difficult given that she was in micro-gravity, as all that was required was a light push and the patience to wait as she floated on out. Then, once she was fully clear of the underside of the mobile suit, she reached up and grabbed a hold, stopping her motion. Now turning her attention to the tools and pages that she had strewn about the area, she took a few moments to collect them and to place the pages of the technical manual back into the corresponding binders. Once those items had been collected, Lacus stood up and, pausing for a moment, looked at the Strike, part of her felt a sense of pride over having been the one responsible for making this mobile suit ready for use again. While she very much did not care for the current war and just days ago would never have conceived of herself doing something like this that no longer mattered; instead, all she could think of was that she was doing her part to keep everyone safe.

Unfortunately, as much as Lacus might have wanted to revel in her accomplishment, now was not the time and she still had one thing left to do before it was ready for Kira to take out into combat. Therefore, Lacus turned her attention away from the Strike and walked over to the side of the hanger where the controls for the exoskeleton were located. Once she reached them, she removed a slightly crumbled piece of paper upon which she had written the Chief's instructions and then with a silent prayer that she wasn't about to break something, she began to enter the commands that would bring the Strike back to its standby position.

Unbeknownst to Lacus as she was doing this, Murdoch had been watching. The couple of times he had silently checked on her, he had seen her methodologically following the directions and now he had just seen her looking upon the craft with pride after completing her work. She might be young and untrained, but those two qualities that he had observed counted for a lot in his book. It did not matter how good of a mechanic one was if they did not feel pride in their work; the pilots expected them to take care of the crafts as if they were people, which was not an unreasonable request given that the pilots' lives depended on making sure that the units were always in tip top shape. And, now having seen how much Lacus cared about the Strike, he was ready to assign her as its primary mechanic.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

Some minutes later found Lacus in the head, after having taken a quick moment to wish Kira well, cleaning herself up, which was not the easiest thing given how much grease and grime she had managed to get on herself, and the state of supplies on the ship._'At least it only happened those first two times.'_ Lacus thought to herself as she worked on cleaning her face, which gave her hope that maybe next time she would be able to escape clean. Ideally, given how dirty she was, she really should have just taken a shower. However, to her a shower seemed too relaxing and peaceful for the fact that the ship was about to enter into combat and besides, she always tended to lose track of time when in the shower – the warmth of the water being just too relaxing, which was an issue as she wanted to be back watching over the children before any of the combat actually began.

Eventually, Lacus managed to get her face and hands clean. Thankfully the coveralls that Murdoch had found for her had long sleeves so her face and hands were the only exposed skin. Her hair, on the other hand, would have to wait till later as there was only so much that one could do using the sink and hand soap, not to mention the fact that she had to be careful about not washing out the dye job and risk revealing her true identity. Taking one last look to make sure that she hadn't missed a large spot, little smudges were okay for now, she began to change out of her coveralls and into a second set that someone had thoughtfully left for her beside the Strike as she was working, a someone that she figured was likely Lt. La Flaga.

Then, when Lacus was finally dressed in clean clothes and mostly clean herself, she left the head and headed back to her quarters. Entering them, she was immediately mobbed by the children who had been wondering where she had disappeared off to.

"Sorry for being gone so long, but I was helping them to prepare Kira's mobile suit," Lacus said.

"You mean that white and blue one that protected us earlier," one of the kids, Jeremy asked.

"Yes, I needed to get it ready so that he can protect us again," Lacus said, to which she get a series of oohs and aahs from the kids. Then continuing, she asked, "So what have you all been up to?"

Following Lacus's prompting, the kids went on to explain what they had been up to, particularly focusing on when Kira had come in to see them about fifteen minutes earlier. The younger ones had been quite fascinated by Birdie, especially when Kira had the robotic pet perform a series of tricks to their delight. Hearing that Kira had a chance to spend some time with the kids and that he had apparently been able to enjoy himself, Lacus smiled.

The animated descriptions of Birdie's tricks eventually reached a lull and with it, Lacus said, "Excuse me for a moment while I use the computer for a moment."

Getting nods of allowance from the kids, Lacus stood up from where she had been seated on the floor just inside the door to the room – she had not made it in any farther, having been utterly bogged down and bombarded by children looking for affection. Walking over to the computer terminal, she sat down and attempted to bring up the combat status screens that she had used during the fall of Heliopolis. However, she quickly found that the crew had apparently locked out the terminal for anything more than very basic functions.

Frowning at her failure to gain access, Lacus considered calling up to the bridge and asking the Captain if she could get a readout of the Strike's status. She really wanted to be able to keep track of Kira's condition, but at the same time she did not want to bother the bridge crew, especially now. However, another answer came when Mr. Pink, who had been playing with the kids came bouncing over to Lacus, seeming to have sensed its mistress's frustration. Bouncing up on to the table it said, "We've got a problem," as it turned to face Lacus.

Giggling at Mr. Pink, Lacus replied, "That we do Mr. Pink. The computer is not letting check on Kira."

"I will not accept this!" the pink Haro yelled in response as it became more animated in its bouncing as it turned to look at the offending computer system.

This announcement caused Lacus to laugh even more, but then to her amazement the terminal suddenly displayed "Authorization Granted," before bringing up the various telemetry windows that Lacus had wanted.

"Thank you, Mr. Pink." Lacus said in response as she picked up her robot._'I know Athrun gave this Haro special lock picking functionality, but I never thought that it would work on a military ship.'_ Lacus thought to herself, now quite glad that she had given into her childish desire to bring Mr. Pink with her and also glad that Athrun had been willingly to indulge her tendencies to sneak away from her handlers – she liked to sneak out for moments of "fresh air," which of course drove her handlers nuts when they realized that she was missing yet once again.

With access now granted, Lacus quickly began bringing up the necessary windows for monitoring the Strike as well as some others to allow her to stay apprised of the rest of the battle. Then with that completed, Lacus turned back to the kids and asked, "Okay, who wants to play a game?"

Getting a series of enthusiastic responses, Lacus picked up a deck of cards that had been donated by the ship's marines before walking over to the center of the room. For as bad off as the crew was with the situation, the crew had really done a good job in taking a moment to look out for the kids, who had been forced to refuge aboard the ship. During those first hours when they were busy grabbing everything thing that might be useful from Morgenroete, one crew member after another, and especially the marines, had come to Lacus and given her something for the kids. In some cases it was something that they had liberated from the destroyed factory, but more often than not the items belonged to the crew member.

In addition to the cards that Lacus was carrying, she had also been given various chocolate bars, paper, pens and pencils. The chocolate she had given to Kira to hide away from the kids so that she could dole it out as special treats to them. As for the pens, pencils, and papers, the kids had apparently been making good use of them while she had been working on the Strike, if the numerous drawings that lay around the room where any indication. While the kids probably would have been content to continue drawing, Lacus figured that with the ship about to go into combat that an activity that required more focus would probably be a good idea, plus it would give her a chance to play with the kids as well.

"Does anyone have a suggestion for a game to play?" Lacus asked, not really knowing many card games herself. For her part, she preferred to spend her free time either exploring her surroundings or when she not allowed to do that and unable to sneak off to quietly sing to herself.

"I do," the oldest of the kids, Jeremy said before launching into an explanation of the rules for the game that he wanted to play.

From there the group lost track of time as they played various card games, having a good time. Eventually, however, they were brought back to the situation that they found themselves in when the Archangel violently shook as a wave of missiles launched by the Buster impacted against the starboard hull. Reacting quickly, Lacus tried to do her best to calm the children down and to let them know that everything would be alright.

For the most part, Lacus's assurances worked and the kids were able to return their attention back to the game. However, one of the youngest of the kids, who was only five years old, was unable to fully push her fear away. Unlike the others, she had experienced this fear once before when the shuttle that she had been on with her parents had been destroyed during the early days of the war, with only her and the flight crew surviving. Back during those days it was not uncommon for commercial shuttles collide with battle debris or unexploded ordnance, as the pilots had yet to adjust to operating in an environment where n-Jammers made their instruments next to useless. Thankfully, Emily's parents, concerned about the war, though unable to avoid the trip, had insisted that Emily wear a pressure suit; much to the young girl's dislike. That concern had allowed Emily to survive the shuttle's collision with a mobile armor remnant that had ripped open the passenger cabin.

That is not to say that Emily had survived unscathed. Watching her parents and the other passengers die slow painful deaths as they asphyxiated in the vacuum of space had horribly traumatized the girl, so much so that she had subconsciously blanked most of her memories of the event. For months afterwards she had retreated into a shell and it was only recently that her psychologist had been able to begin to draw her out and now that she was finally beginning to put that experience behind her, she was faced with an even worse situation.

As they all turned their attention back to the game, Lacus kept a close eye on the children and in so doing she saw Emily's fear begin to morph from simple fear to outright terror even as the little girl tried to hide her feelings. Not saying anything, Lacus quietly put down her cards before reaching over and lifting Emily up. Caught up in combating her terror as she was, Emily did not notice being picked up, but when she felt the warmth of Lacus's embrace as she was seated into the older girl's lap, she looked up, confusion on her face. Seeing Emily's questioning eyes, Lacus simply smiled in response before giving the girl a kiss on the forehead and wrapping her arms tighter around the little one. Emily did not need any more prodding and she quickly snuggled into Lacus's embrace and closed her eyes, trusting the black haired girl to protect her.

Watching Emily snuggle into her embrace, Lacus couldn't help but smile, glad that she had been able to bring peace to the child. Then as she turned her attention back to the game and the other children, she began to absently sing a soft lullaby for the young child. Picking up her cards and taking a moment to see how the play had progressed while she had been focusing on Emily, Lacus frowned. While she was not playing to win, she still wanted to make a decent showing and without any card to play she was now forced to pick up the discard pile which had grown quite large.

_'Guess there isn't any other option,'_ Lacus thought to herself as she added the dozens of discarded cards to her hand to the delight and snickers of the others.

Of the children, Michelle, who was sitting to Lacus's left had the largest smile on her face; though, she did refrain from actually snickering at Lacus. When Michelle then promptly proceeded to play her remaining three cards, Lacus found at why – the girl had just garnered a slew of points thanks to Lacus having practically half of the deck in her hand.

"Thank you, Lacus." Michelle said with a big smile once she had finished counting up the points that she had gotten from Lacus.

"You're welcome," Lacus replied before saying, "Here let me shuffle the cards for you and then you can deal. Maybe this time I will get all of the points."

However, before the second hand had gone on long, Mr. Pink began yelling, "We've got a problem! We've got a problem!"

Turning her attention to her Haro that was rapidly bouncing on the desk, Lacus was going to chide it for being too noisy when she caught sight of the current telemetry feed. Gasping "Kira" as she saw that Kira was surrounded by multiple enemy units, Lacus's eyes went wide with fear. Gently placing Emily, who had fallen asleep, on the floor, Lacus stood and briskly walked over to get a better view of the terminal's displays.

A closer look, however, did nothing to alleviate her worry for Kira. She could now see that four units had surrounded Kira and if she was understanding the readouts correctly, they were the sister units to the Strike. That, however, was not the worst of it, for as she looked over the status readout from Strike she saw that its primary battery was already fully depleted and that its secondary battery was nearly gone as well. Now frozen by her fear for Kira, Lacus could do nothing more than to watch as the battery indicator slipped closer and closer to no charge. And, then when the indicator finally red lined and the Strike's Phase Shift failed her breath caught as her world began to collapse.

However, to Lacus surprise and relief the Strike's signal stayed strong. Unfortunately, the relief was short lived as Lacus soon realized that the telemetry was indicating that the Strike had been captured for the Strike's signal was overlapped by one of the ZAFT units and all five units were moving towards the ZAFT carriers.

"Kira, no," Lacus whispered as the meaning of what Kira being captured meant began to sink in and with those words Lacus collapsed to her knees. Sitting lifelessly there on her legs, her mind began playing out scenes of what Kira was sure to face once he was brought on board the ZAFT carriers. Torture would likely be too kind of a word for what he would face once his captors realized that he was a Coordinator. The fact that he was a citizen of Orb and was just trying to protect his friends and the other refugees until they could all get to safety would not matter; they would still see him as nothing more than a traitor to the PLANTS.

In her worry about Kira and his treatment as a POW, Lacus's mind also reminded her that in many way that she was just as much as a traitor to her people as he was and in some ways more so. He was not a citizen of the PLANTS, where she was the daughter of the Chairman of the Supreme Council and furthermore it was she who had convinced him to pilot the Strike. However, those thoughts were quickly discarded as being unimportant in the face of what Kira was to face and she would have gladly taken his place as the captured soldier.

"Don't worry. He'll be okay," a soft voice followed by a hug said.

Looking over, the need for that to be the truth evident in her eyes, Lacus saw that it was Emily was the one who was trying to cheer her up. Apparently, the young girl had awoken and was now trying to return the favor. Even though Lacus knew that it was just wishful thinking to believe that Kira would be okay, she said, "You're right, he'll be fine," in response and she pulled the young girl back into her arms. This time, however, Lacus was holding Emily not so as to comfort the young girl, but was instead trying to draw her own comfort from Emily and for the first time since the attack on Heliopolis she let go of her reign on her emotions and began crying over the unfairness of it all.

Seeing Lacus collapse the younger children began to cry and whimper themselves. While they might not fully understand what was going on, the shaking of the ship scared them, and now with Lacus lost in her own grief, they had no one to tell them that everything would be alright. Only the three oldest children, Jeremy, Erin, and Triela were able to keep control of the emotions as they desperately watched the telemetry readout for signs of what was going to happen next and as such a few minutes later they were the only ones to see the Moebius Zero rocket into the formation of ZAFT units.

"Lacus, look!" Triela exclaimed with an upbeat voice when she realized that the Zero was engaging the unit that had captured the Strike.

Reacting mostly to the command to look, Lacus uncurled slightly from how she had wrapped herself around Emily and looked up at Triela. Upon seeing the brunette's overjoyed expression, Lacus's face creased in confusion as followed Triela's gesturing arm and looked at the terminal.

"He... he's free. But how?" Lacus asked, hope creeping into her voice.

"The Moebius Zero," Jeremy replied. "Lt. La Flaga came out of nowhere, screaming in fast. He was hitting the Aegis all over the place with those remote gun barrels of the Zero and it was forced to let the Strike go."

Smiling as she truly began to feel hope again, Lacus quietly said, "Thank you Lieutenant," before returning to her feet so that she could continue observing the battle.

Of course, as good as it was that Kira had been freed by La Flaga, he was not by any stretch of the imagination out of the woods yet. He was still very vulnerable without his Phase Shift armor and he was a good distance away from the Archangel. If he had been up against only one or two of the captured G-Weapons, there would not have been as much of an issue. But with all four of the captured units and only one support craft as escort, making it back Archangel was still a long shot and then there was the question of what would happen once he made it back to the Archangel, as after all the whole reason for launching the Strike had been to protect the Archangel for those mobile suits.

Consequently, while Kira was heading back to the Archangel, he was not heading back so as to land and when Lacus realized that Kira's trajectory was starting to take out and away from the Archangel, she began to get worried again. _'Please Kira, don't __do__ anything foolish.'_ Lacus silently prayed to herself as she hoped that Kira was not attempting to lure the ZAFT units away from the Archangel or using himself as bait so to bring the enemy units within the firing arc of the Archangel's main batteries. Though, as she looked closer at the readout as she tried to divine his actions, she relaxed a little bit when she realized that only one of the ZAFT units was currently following him, the others for some reason were holding back.

"They just launched something," the redhead, Erin, said, as a new contact suddenly began feeding telemetry data back to the Archangel.

"What could that be?" Lacus wondered, sure that there wasn't anything else down there in the hanger bay that they could use.

"I'm not sure what it is, but Kira is on course to intercept it and its designator is similar to that of the Strike," Jeremy replied as he took a look at the new contact's telemetry.

_'Could it be?'_ Lacus thought to herself, as a memory of something that she had flipped by in the technical manual came to mind, and she took a closer look of her own at the readout, not that she was able to confirm what she thought that she remembered. Even still, she was once again truly feeling hopeful, as she hung on to the remembered possibility. Watching the track of new contact she saw the returns for it and the Strike begin to overlap. However, it seemed that fate had one last curve ball to throw for just as the two returns began to overlap, the display updated to show that the tailing unit was firing on the Strike. If that unknown unit was indeed a fresh Striker pack and assuming that the Strike could exchange packs in time, then he would be okay, but if not then this was it and when the Strike and the unknown object's returns disappeared from the display Lacus was sure that she had been mistaken. But, then to her immense relief, the Strike's return reappeared, as the interference from the detonation of the exploded Aile pack cleared.

"He's okay." Lacus said aloud as she slipped to the ground spent.

"You see, he's okay," Emily said moments later after tugging on Lacus's coveralls to get her attention.

"You're right. I should have listened to you." Lacus replied as she knelt down and picked up Emily into a big hug.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

Even though Lacus now knew that Kira was okay, she was still deeply troubled by his near capture and twice near death during the combat and so, as soon as the ship secured from Action Stations some time later, Lacus bolted from her room. Her sole thought was finding Kira and reassuring herself that he was indeed still alive and well. As focused as she was on those two goals, she did not even think about telling the kids to remain in the room, nor did she even remember that she was currently holding Emily. Consequently, the crew members who were able to leave their duty stations were treated to the sight of a black haired girl floating through the halls at top speed, pushing herself along, and a trail of kids bouncing off the walls behind her as they tried to follow.

In some ways, it was a sign of how much the majority of the crew realized that they owed Kira that no one called out to Lacus to tell her to return to her quarters or to even ask her to slow down. Instead, those who saw the little parade just smiled and thanked their lucky fortune that they had those two on board. By now there was practically no crew member left who did not know about Kira and his friends, the gossip of the Coordinator kid who had saved the ship by piloting the Strike and his friends who had all joined the crew had very quickly made its way around the ship during the quiet of the silent run. It was only the heavy work load of tending to the just-started systems of the ship that had kept Kira and Lacus from having to fend off gawkers.

Reaching the heavy blast doors that separated the hanger from the rest of the ship, Lacus absently placed Emily down on the ground while she turned her attention to opening the doors. Then once the doors had opened sufficiently for her to slip through, Lacus was through them. Scanning the room, she quickly located the Strike and, with a firm push, she launched herself towards it cockpit and Kira. Behind her, Emily and the rest of the children followed her on in as well. However, unlike Lacus their attempts to launch themselves towards the Strike sent them in every direction except towards the Strike and in many cases tumbling end over end. Thankfully, some of the deck hands had noticed their entrance and had quickly dropped what they were doing to intercept the kids before they hurt themselves. Lacus, however, was oblivious to all of this commotion.

Closing in on the Strike, Lacus overhead Mu ask, "What's wrong?"

"The kid won't come out of there," Murdoch replied.

_'Kira?'_ Lacus exclaimed in her mind as her worry for her friend increased. Overcome as she was by concern that something new was wrong with Kira, she missed the rest of conversation. However, the sound of the seals releasing and the hatch opening was enough to remind her of why she was here. She was going to make sure that Kira was okay and if he wasn't then she was going to find a way to make it right.

For Lacus her timing was extremely fortuitous for as she looked up, she realized that she had already arrived at the Strike and so with a quick grab onto the mobile suit, she altered her trajectory to take her on in. Breezing by the other two she politely, but firmly said, "Excuse me," as she inadvertently knocked La Flaga out of way.

"Wha...?" Mu exclaimed as he suddenly found himself tumbling away from the Strike. Reacting quickly, he grabbed a hold of the floor of the catwalk that he was passing by, stopping his motion and allowing him to right himself. Turning back to the Strike he was about to tear into whoever had carelessly knocked him out of the way, as he was quite lucky that he had not been injured, but when he saw that it was Lacus in there with Kira, his anger faded away to instead be replaced by the thought, '_Why am I not surprised?'_ Turning to look at Murdoch, he gave the chief mechanic a wink.

"Kira," Lacus called as she entered the cockpit. When she did not get any response she repeated her call more loudly, this time getting him to look up her, but with a dead look in his eyes. "It's okay Kira, you're all right. It's all over for now," Lacus said in a gentle voice as she floated up to him. Then wrapping one arm around Kira, she stopped her forward motion and proceeded to undo his restraining straps. Once he was free, she pulled him towards her body before pushing off with her legs, sending them free of the cockpit.

As the two of the slowly drifted into the Archangel's hanger, Lacus undid Kira's helmet and set it loose. Then wrapping her arms tightly around him, she pulled him against her body and just held him, hoping that he would be able to sense how much having him return meant to her. Held there in place my Lacus's arms, Kira finally let the walls down and tightly grabbing a hold of his new friend began to cry.

Using one of her hands to stroke Kira's back, Lacus quietly said, "Let it all out. I am here for you Kira and I am not going to go anywhere," before beginning to sing a soothing tune.

Watching from down below on the ground, Murdoch said, "And, you say the two of them aren't an item."

"Yep, apparently they only met today. But, watching those two, I don't think it matters whether or not their minds have realized it, their hearts have already decided. I just wish that they weren't caught up in this war."

"I know, the lifespan of a pilot is just too short," Murdoch said with a sigh knowing that the relationship of the two was doomed to heartbreak.

Up in the air, neither Kira nor Lacus were aware of the discussion of their non-relationship nor were they aware of the small collisions against their bodies as the crew members sent the kids up their way. Instead, they were wholly focused with each other. For Kira, the simple sensation of being held and sung to reminded him that he was alive and for Lacus the feeling of Kira in her arms meant that her friend had not been lost. It was not the fear of what would have happened to her or the ship if Kira had been captured that had worried her. No, it was the fear of what would happen to Kira. Even though he had done the only responsible thing when faced with war, many in ZAFT would still see him as a traitor and Lacus was sure that he would not have been well treated with Athrun there.

_'Athrun!'_ the name of her fiancé rang through Lacus's mind. She was conflicted about what she should think, but for the moment anger and disappointment was associated with that name. However, now was not the time to think about Athrun, later when she was alone she could indulge her own hurt, now was the time for Kira. He did not need the added burden of knowing about her connection to Athrun; it would just make things harder for him and so Lacus pushed the name out of her mind.

However, her tenseness lasted long enough for Kira to notice that something was wrong. Looking up from Lacus's chest he asked, "Lacus, is everything alright?"

"Don't worry about it Kira, I'm fine. I am more worried about you. How are you doing?" Lacus asked, as she began to reluctantly release Kira.

"Better now, thanks to you." Kira replied with a smile that caused Lacus to lightly blush as he let go.

"I'm glad." Lacus replied with her own smile.

Watching from the ground, Mu saw when Kira's posture changed from clinging to Lacus to simply holding onto her. Smiling, knowing that she had successfully gotten him through the after-combat fears that could paralyze a rookie pilot, he pushed off the ground. While he would have liked to have let them have some more time, they were fast approaching Artemis and there were some things that needed to be taken care of before they met with their allies.

Rebounding off the ceiling first, Mu grabbed a hold of the two, transferring some of downward momentum to them, and said, "You did good kid."

When they reached the ground, Mu did not immediately release the two. Instead, standing slightly hunched over them with his arms draped over their shoulders he said, "Kid listen, I want you to lock down the activation program for the Strike so that only you can use it."

"But why?" Lacus asked.

"We are about to enter Artemis. However, Artemis is a Eurasian facility and the relationships between them and the Atlantic Federation are hardly what you could call positive. And, in our current state we are fully at their mercy should they decide to try anything," Mu said explaining the situation. "I also want the two of you to stick close together and to stay with the children as well. When they realize they can't make the Strike work, they may try something more drastic and I don't want it to involve the pretty miss or the children. Oh, and kid I suggest that you change into the clothes that you arrived in."

Nodding their understanding, Kira and Lacus stayed standing there as Mu left to head off to the bridge. Turning to Lacus, Kira said, "I don't understand this. Why all this unnecessary conflict?"

Placing a hand on Kira's shoulder Lacus said, "It's because they have forgotten what they are fighting for. If everyone remained true to their heart then we wouldn't have as many wars and if we did have them we would be able to lay down our weapons sooner," Lacus said.

"Well I guess I better go lock down the Strike. I will see you later then," Kira said as he turned to return to the Strike.

"Kira let me. I can use Mr. Pink to lock down the Strike for you. Why don't you take the children, get yourself changed, and then get yourself something to eat?" Lacus suggested instead, having noticed that her Haro was rolling around on the floor by her feet.

Tired as he was from the battle and still a bit scared over what had happened out there, Kira welcomed the ability to get away from them Strike, and so replied, "Thank you Lacus."

"I will see you shortly then," Lacus said with happiness fully returned to her voice before turning and launching herself back up at the Strike.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

**Archangel - Bridge**

"But why do we need to do something like that?" Badgiruel asked, not understanding why the Chief wanted to rig a mock up mobile suit together.

"The G-Weapons are the first mobile suits of the alliance and none of the technicians who worked on them survived the attack on the factory district. I don't want to risk damaging the Strike as my men learn how to maintain a mobile suit for the first time." Murdoch explained.

"Do we even have equipment to spare for such a project?" Ramius asked, wanting to make sure that this option was even feasible first before rendering her decision.

"Actually we do. When we loaded supplies from the factory, as you know we took everything that we could and did not spend any time to examine what we were gathering first. While that allowed us to father far more supplies than we would have been able to otherwise, a consequence to that is that we have a lot of spare parts to the other G-Weapons, parts that cannot be used for the Strike. While it may be possible to, with a lot of work, retrofit them for the Strike, I think that we would be better off using them as a training aid."

"Parts are one thing, but you still need a torso section to fully integrate them and to work with the OS." Mu replied.

"Actually, the incompatible parts that we have include a pair of what appear to be test bed torsos. They are definitely not combat rated, but they should be fine for practice assembling." Murdoch said in explanation.

"But is this really needed, we will be docking with Artemis soon where we can get fully resupplied and we will be able to hook up with the fleet there." Badgiruel pointed out.

"Remember that they are Eurasian and we are Atlantic Federation. About the only reason why our two countries haven't started shooting at one another yet is because of ZAFT. Let's just say that I don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket. Plus, as vaulted as the Umbrella of Artemis is, I am not willing to put my full trust in it to protect us from Le Creuset," Mu countered, indicating his support for the Chief's project.

Badgiruel was, of course, plainly aware of the less than friendly relations between the two major OMNI powers and had been concerned about the resulting breach of security that would result from bringing the heavily classified _Archangel_ and Strike to the Eurasian facility. However, she also agreed with the Captain that their only chance of protecting the ship and the Strike for the Atlantic Federation was to go to Artemis. On the other hand, the possibility of ZAFT breaking through the Umbrella was not something she had even given thought to, she had just assumed that their mission would be over once they docked at Artemis. But now, as she thought about it, she realized that La Flaga had a good point and so, changing her opinion, she said, "In second thought, the Lieutenant is correct, until we have formally turned over command of this ship to an Atlantic Federation fleet, we must prepare for all contingencies. Chief, would it be possible to make that unit, combat rated?"

"What?" the chief asked, taken back by the request.

"Even if it is no better than a standard run-of-the-mill ZAFT mobile suit and even if it is not that good, having the ability to deploy something no matter how under matched it is could mean the difference between us surviving an engagement and being destroyed. For the moment we are wholly dependent on the Strike for our protection. Even if the unit was useful for no more than standing topside with the Agni cannon plugged into the Archangel's power system, it would still be worth it."

"Chief?" Ramius asked, intrigued by what her XO was proposing. Keeping the unit on the Archangel would reduce its required defensive capabilities and could provide them with a needed edge.

"I guess that would be possible. Those torsos don't have any batteries, given that they were simply test beds, but the Striker packs each have a spare battery; so if we were to fuse one of them to the torso, we should be able to have something that could move around without needing to be tied to the ship with an umbilical cord. I would still need to add armor to the torso section, as right now it is utterly unprotected."

"Alright Chief, you have my approval to begin your project as long as you maintain your priority on the rest of the systems and that you combine it with a Striker pack, so that we could deploy it if needed." Ramius said.

"Captain," Murdoch replied with a salute, before turning and doing the same for Badgiruel and La Flaga.

Following the chief to the elevator, Mu stepped inside with him and as the doors closed said, "Chief, not sure if you were already planning to, but I would suggest that you involve Ms. Sagara in your little project. It will give her something to keep herself occupied with while the kid is out there fighting and I have a feeling that she wants to be the chief mechanic for his unit, so this would be good experience for her."

**-End Chapter**

**_Author Notes:_**

1) Sorry for the long delay, a hard drive crash last December destroyed the original chapter 3 (that is what I get for not backing up), and "The Fragility of Time" still gets my priority. However, there should be a less of a wait until chapter 4 is ready. Four is nearly finished, except for a couple of additional scenes that I need to add, so assuming I don't get horribly side tracked I should have that off to by beta in the next couple of months.

2) In case anyone feels like raising a red flag about them putting together another MS, there is no need to worry. I am not creating a new high powered unit and I believe that there is every reason to believe that they have enough parts on board. After all it is the only explanation for how the Strike is always looking new and shiny when it goes out into battle. There is only so much a new coat of paint can hide and the Strike Rouge originally started out as spare parts for the Strike.

3) Well I hope you have enjoyed this chapter, it has been a joy to write and explore how Lacus and Kira's characters would develop from this new set of circumstances.


	4. Decisions

**Chapter 4: Decisions**

**Date Posted: 7/20/08  
Last Edit: 7/20/08**

**Disclaimer: **A reminder I own none of the characters of this story, all rights are owned by others. However, the unique circumstances of the story are mine. If you distribute the story, do only so freely and inform me of where you post it. If you wish to play in the universe variant that I am creating feel free, just send me a link to you story and give credit where credit is due.

* * *

**Eurasian Federation Military Installation – Artemis****  
Archangel Enlisted Crew Cafeteria**

As the ship's senior officers had feared, the reunion at Artemis was not the welcoming one that the crew was hoping for. Instead, no sooner had they docked, than they found themselves being stormed by the marines stationed at Artemis and the senior officers being led off the ship. For Artemis's Commandant, a decorated Rear Admiral named Gerard Garcia, the heavy show of force was not because he feared this to be a ZAFT trap or anything along those lines, but a calculated power play that he planned to use to garner unshared classified research for the Eurasian Federation. His first stop had been to visit the three senior officers in hope that they would simply provide him with what he wanted. After all, the senior officers were comprised of only two Lieutenants and one Ensign, not exactly high ranking officers who would understand the politics. Unfortunately, they had been too well trained and just gave him the standard responses.

Commandant Garcia was not deterred, however, as the first approach had been something of a long shot to begin with. Consequently, he was now boarding the ship so as to take a blunter approach; directly interrogating the ship's crew. No matter what, he was going to extract the technical data of the miraculous mobile suit that the ship contained for his nation and with any luck he would be able to ride this fortuitous turn of events to his next promotion and a very comfy retirement once those worthless Coordinators were put down. The only hiccup so far in his plan was that apparently the Chief mechanic or, more likely, the pilot had placed a lock on the MS so as to prevent his technicians from starting it and downloading its OS and technical data. He did not, however, see this as too much of a problem. The tragedy at Heliopolis had left this ship primarily manned by junior officers and low grade enlisted folk and where there should have been dozens of senior officers there were only three. That meant that the pilot of the MS was a rookie pilot and he was sure that by applying some pressure that he could break the pilot. He of course wouldn't do anything that the Atlantic Federation could really complain about, but he did after all have an obligation to make sure there were no ZAFT infiltrators on board.

Entering into the officer's cafeteria, where the Archangel 's crew had been gathered, the Commandant took a moment to look around. As expected, most of the faces in the room looked quite young. Surprisingly it looked like two of the civilians and some children were also here. He knew that the ship had civilian refugees, but they were all supposed to be confined to the enlisted soldiers' chow lines. _'They must be related to some of the crew,' _he thought to himself as he considered their potential for being interrogation targets if the crew would not crack. Interestingly enough, those civilians were located at the table that had the youngest looking crew members. Deciding that those crew members would be the perfect ones to start with, he headed on over to them.

Walking up to the table, Commandant Garcia noticed that a couple of the slightly older faces at the table appeared to belong to crew members who the ship's manifest had listed as serving on the bridge. There was also an older gentleman that he recognized as belonging to the ship's chief mechanic who was sitting across from what appeared to be a just enlisted mechanic, who interestingly enough was female. "Tell me who is the pilot or mechanic of that Mobile Suit," he said as he came up on the table.

Getting no response, he quickly moved onto providing a pressure, having spotted the perfect subject - a young female officer. Even if the kids had been instructed to remain quiet, he was sure that picking on the uniformed girl would be sure to rile them up and cause them to let something slip. "While I wouldn't think that a woman would pilot such a craft," he said while turning his attention to Miriallia, "It comes to my attention that the Captain of this ship is a woman." That said, he grabbed a hold of Miriallia's arm and roughly lifted her up and out of her chair, causing her to yelp in pain.

"Miriallia!" Kira cried out; however, any more outbursts were killed when Murdoch clamped down hard on Kira's shoulder with his hand. Having realized what the Artemis officers would likely try during this period of "house arrest" while they awaited Atlantic Federation HQ's confirmation of their ID codes, Murdoch had purposely positioned himself behind the kid, so as to ensure that the kid didn't give anything up.

Unfortunately for all of Murdoch's good planning, Kira was not the only one that he should have been worrying about. Lacus had felt the same indignation that Kira did at Miriallia's rough treatment and Kira's outburst had caught her attention. Realizing that Kira would not be able to stay quiet for long, if the Eurasian officers treated Kira's other friends in the same manner, Lacus spoke up first. She would not let him turn himself in, nor would she let these OMNI officers learn that he was a Coordinator, and so Lacus pushed back her seat, stood up, and said, "I am the pilot."

Barely restraining himself from laughing at the ridiculous statement; though, his aid failed in that regard; the Commandant said, "I am not interested in games kid. Now why don't you tell me who the real pilot is," as he released Miriallia.

"I am the pilot and as for me being female you did say that the Captain is a woman," Lacus stated cutting to the heart of why Garcia did not believe her statement. "And, as for how I can pilot the Strike, I am a Coordinator. If you don't believe me, my real hair color is pink. Not that I really like it and so every couple of days I dye it a different color. With the appropriate solvent you can see for yourself."

It was as if a switch had been thrown for as soon as her declaration of being a Coordinator was out of her mouth, Lacus found all of the marines in the room pointing their rifles at her. Lacus, however, did not falter once and completed her statement as if there had been no reaction.

"In that case, you are to come with me," Garcia ordered.

"I understand," Lacus replied as she finished pushing her chair back and began to walk away from the table.

"Lacus!" Kira yelled to his new friend. He could not understand why she had just said that she was the pilot of the Strike. He would have objected to her statement, but Murdoch now held his shoulder in a death grip and the look that she had sent his way as she had stood up killed his words of contradiction.

Hearing, Kira's yell, Lacus politely said to the Commandant, "Just a moment please," before turning around and walking over to the backside of the table so as to reach Kira.

Reaching Kira, Lacus placed a hand on his shoulder, and said, "Kira don't worry, I will be fine." Then knowing that she was going to have to explain why this "civilian" was concerned for her, Lacus bent over and placed a light kiss on his lips. Straightening back up, she said to Kira, "Watch over the kids for me while I am gone."

Leaving Kira behind, hoping that he would be safe now, Lacus walked on over to where the Commandant was standing. Reaching him, she said, "I apologize for the delay sir, but my boyfriend is having a bit of a hard time adjusting to me being the one protecting him and everyone else. However, Naturals are just unable to pilot the Strike."

OoOoOoOoOoOo

"For someone who has betrayed her own kind you seem to be awfully calm given the circumstances. After all, given that you have turned traitor once, what is there to prevent you from doing it a second time?" the Commandant said hoping to trip the girl into giving him information.

Hearing those words, Lacus felt a bit of guilt well up in her stomach over what she was doing. As much as she knew that there was no other option than to fight against her nation's militia, there was still guilt there and hearing this man speak as if she had simply decided to change sides made it worse. However, there was nothing that she could do about it and squashing those feelings she calmly replied, "My loyalties are to this ship and its crew. My orders are to protect the ship and to ensure that it and its crew arrive safely at its destination. I know that you do not have the authority to do anything more than to delay us so as to get a sneak peak at the new technology that will soon be available to the Earth Alliance; therefore I am not worried about you."

_'A Special Forces operative?'_ Commandant Garcia mistakenly thought to himself as considered Lacus's words. That did make the most sense for why a Coordinator was piloting the Archangel's mobile suit. There had to be something tying the pilot to the Alliance, otherwise she would have just turned coat earlier on. The battle that had been fought a short while ago would have been the best perfect for that pilot to have returned to ZAFT. Without its mobile suit, the Archangel would have had no option other than to surrender, solving the potential problem of her apparent boyfriend, assuming that she held any real feelings for him.

Being a Special Forces operative would also explain why she was able to pilot that mobile suit as well as she did. Her skill obviously belied that she had logged many hours of training. Even still, he was not going to let his guard down around her. In fact this actually meant that he was going to have to be far more wary of her actions. Had she been a regular pilot, he would have had a chance at convincing to defect to the Eurasian Alliance, but there was no chance with one who was a Special Forces officer. The only good thing was that she had been apparently instructed to play nicely if she ran into her allies, or at least he hoped that she was telling the truth about not being worried about his little power play. The alternative to that was not something that he wanted to contemplate.

"Now if I understand correctly, there were four other units in this series. Where are those pilots?"

"Dead. All five original pilots perished during ZAFT's cowardly attack on Heliopolis," Lacus replied, pulling on her years of stage skills and the little bit of acting lessons that she had been given for the few cameos that she had made over the years. She would feel a bit more comfortable with the persona that she was trying to portray for herself if she had a few more of those acting lessons, something that she had not cared for at the time, preferring to be nothing more than herself.

"My original orders did not have me piloting the Strike or any of the other mobile weapons, at least not until after their delivery. However, the attack changed that and I was forced to take a more active role in order to ensure my mission."

Nodding his understanding to that, Commandant Garcia wondered what other secrets that the Atlantic Federation was hiding. Capturing Coordinators and brainwashing them into being perfect OMNI soldiers was a brilliant ploy. Toy soldiers like this girl were the perfect weapons both in terms of their effectiveness and their unexpectedness. That of course had to be the reason why she was not one of the original pilots, no reason to tip their hand prematurely. The Archangel's mobile suit compliment would obviously have been Natural pilots, but then there would have been a black unit of Coordinators to work behind the scenes. All in all, it was a perfect strategy and he liked the irony of using Coordinators against their own kind.

Smiling at that thought of irony, the Commandant was broken out of his thoughts as they arrived at the entrance to the hanger bay. Pausing, he waited as his aid opened the door. Till now a half dozen guards had been walking to his side and behind him with their rifles trained on the girl. However, the catwalk here on the second level was too narrow for that and so with a nod to his guards they fell back into a double column behind him and the girl. Now was a moment of truth as to whether this girl was a ZAFT spy or and an OMNI soldier.

The thought of trying to break away from the Eurasian forces never once crossed into Lacus's mind as she proceeded to lead the way onto the catwalk, making sure to walk in the same manner that she had observed the Commandant walking in. Walking up to the control panel at the junction that led to the Strike's cockpit, Lacus paused and took a moment to observe the control panel. As expected, someone had already accessed the Strike and its hatch was currently open; however, Lacus still went through the drill of checking the external readouts. At minimum, the exercise bought her another couple of minutes of time.

Then, satisfied as she could be with the external check, Lacus strode forward and entered the Strike. Sitting down in the chair, she momentarily closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Up till now she had been able to get away with her acting skills. Unfortunately, those were no longer going to be sufficient for her to keep this charade up. Now she was going to see how well her limited maintenance knowledge translated into convincing someone that she was the unit's pilot. Thankfully that maintenance knowledge did include some rudimentary know how on how to operate the MS, a necessary skill for anything more than basic suit turn around. Unfortunately, she had only skimmed over those pages in the tech manual and she, of course, had only been in the cockpit once, when she locked down the unit.

"If you will give me a moment, I will disengage the lock that I have placed on the OS," Lacus explained, and then getting an idea, she continued with, "However, I must warn you that the Strike did suffer some damage to its control systems during the last battle. I am not sure if you have reviewed those logs yet, but I was forced to exchange Striker packs in mid-battle, and, unfortunately, during the change out the Aile Striker pack was destroyed. The Phase Shift Armor was only partially energized at that time and as a result the unit took damage. Thankfully the damage was minor, but it appears that some of the control circuits were affected and I have not had the chance to repair the damage. I was hoping to have that opportunity while we enjoyed your hospitality."

"You also maintain the mobile suit?" the Commandant's aid asked, a bit surprised.

"That I do. We are short staffed as it is and I would not feel comfortable going out in a unit maintained by someone that I did not explicitly trust."

_'Spoken like a true Special Forces operative,'_ the commandant thought to himself, further falling to the fake persona that Lacus was projecting. "Do not worry yourself with that. For now I am only interested in examining the combat data. Once you have transferred the data you may begin your repairs. Later of course, I will want a full briefing on the capabilities and specifications of this unit as well as the ones that ZAFT now posses."

"Yes sir," Lacus replied before turning her attention to the computer terminal. It did not surprise her that none of the technicians had been able to crack her lockout. According to the documentation, the lockout that came with the original OS was near full proof and its only weakness was its password program. Unable to write a new password program, which would have required Kira's help, Lacus had, instead, used the existing password components, but in a manner that their original designers had probably never intended. With a little bit of creative thinking on her end, she had crafted an unlock procedure based on an unwritten song that was currently floating around in her mind. Therefore, as Lacus hummed various bars of that song, she proceeded to unlock the Strike.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

Following the departure of the Artemis officers with Lacus in their custody, all of Kira's friends carefully watched the brown haired boy with obvious concern evident in their eyes. From his facial expression, they each knew that he was having troubling accepting Lacus's efforts to protect him, not that any of them were at all surprised by that. He was always there helping each of them in any way that he could, never asking for anything in return, seeing it as his responsibility to make sure that they were all okay. In the past that was something that they had taken for granted and they probably had taken advantage of Kira no matter how much he liked helping them, which was one reason why they had all decided to volunteer to support the ship as well – they could not let him carry this burden alone.

Consequently, now that Kira found himself unable to do anything while someone else protected him, he was of course feeling out of sorts and it showed to those who knew him. They all just hoped that Kira would realize that speaking up would do nothing to help Lacus and would only make her sacrifice worthless. Both Tolle and Miriallia, being the best at understanding Kira's emotional states, wished that they could comfort him, talk to him about what Lacus was doing. However, with the Eurasian marines standing guard about the room that was not an option. Anything that they could say to help assure his guilt would tip the marines off that something was not right.

The need for keeping quiet did not last for long, however, as within ten minutes of Lacus's departure the ship along with the rest of Artemis shook as the Blitz began to take out the Light Wave emitters. Instantly, realizing that the Le Creuset team was coming for them, the crew of the Archangel rose up against their captors, quickly overwhelming the few marines who had been left behind to guard them. The purpose of those guards, of course, had been more perfunctory than anything else – Artemis recognized that the crew of the Archangel were members of OMNI and was therefore relying on the threat of court martial to restrain the crew. Consequently, they were barely a bump in the road as the crew rushed into the corridors and began dispersing towards their action stations.

Grabbing a hold of Kira as they broke into the hallways, Miriallia said, "Kira go make sure Ms. Sagara is okay."

"Understood," Kira replied, Lacus already the full focus of his attention.

Speeding down the corridors as fast as he could, Kira silently hoped that the Eurasian officers had not been too unkind to Lacus. If they truly believed that she was the pilot, they likely would not have any hesitation on being forceful with their questioning. That realization brought to mind some horrible thoughts on what they might be doing to her, which Kira forced to the back of his mind. However, that was not the worst option that his mind came up with as ran through the halls. For all they knew Lacus was a pilot of a very powerful mobile suit and they were now under attack, so in all likelihood they would be sending her out there to fight.

That realization almost caused Kira to come to a stop as it fully hit him; however, some how he forced himself to keep running and now in its aftermath he was sprinting as fast as he could through the corridors. While he might have originally given some thought to putting on his pilot's suit, now that was no longer an option. Every moment he was not there to get Lacus out of the Strike was another moment during which she might be sent out to be slaughtered.

When Kira finally reached the hanger, he was breathing quite heavily. However, giving no thought to how exhausted his body was from the solid sprint, he quickly turned to look at the Strike's carrier, but to his dismay it was not there. _'No they couldn't have!'_ Kira thought, his blood running cold, as he realized that those bastards had sent his friend to her death.

Moments later the sound of heavy doors moving in the hanger drew Kira's attention. Turning to look in the direction of the sound, hope returned as he saw the bottom of the Strike's legs as the bulkhead door to the starboard elevator finished closing. _'There's still time.'_ Kira realized as the weariness that had come upon him when he had found the Strike gone vanished.

Knowing that he still did not have much time, Kira ran as fast as he could over to the maintenance shaft that was located beside the elevator that provided access to the catapult. Reaching the door, Kira quickly released the bulkhead seals, opened the heavy door, and climbed in. Once inside, he pushed off as hard as he could from the floor, not caring about how painful it was going to be to arrest his upward momentum when he reached the top, all he could think of was getting to the launch deck before the Strike was secured into the catapult. When he did reach the top of the shaft moments later, he did not give a second thought to reaching out with his right hand to grab a hold of the ladder and ignoring the wrenching and resulting pain in his shoulder he pulled himself to a stop.

Then repeating the process he performed at the base of the shaft, Kira opened the upper bulkhead hatch and entered on into the service space of the catapult. Walking up to the small windows that opened onto the launch deck almost in a trance, Kira looked out and was relieved to see that the Strike was just now being moved forward from the elevator – there was still time. Then quickly walking over to the airlock that provided access to the launch deck for the deck hands, Kira activated the airlock's radio.

"Lacus, this is Kira."

However, when no reply was immediately forthcoming, Kira began to feel his stomach drop. _'Did something happen to __Lacus;__ was he wrong about her being in there?'_

The reason for Lacus's lack of reply, however, was nothing terrible, but something quite mundane, as she couldn't figure out how to operate the radio. Eventually, though, she managed to find the transmit button, and she replied, "Kira is that you?"

"Yes, Lacus are you okay?" Kira asked in response, worry still quite evident in his voice.

"I am fine. The Eurasian officers did not hurt me," Lacus replied, feeling better knowing that Kira and the others must have been released.

Releasing a large sigh of relief, Kira said, "Lacus I can't let you go out there by yourself, I am going to come join you."

"Kira, the deck is depressurized." Lacus replied, sure that Kira was not wearing a pressure suit.

"I know, but it cannot be helped. Now, I want you to turn the Strike towards the airlock; it is along the left side of the catapult. I am going to open the airlock on my side and launch myself towards you. Then when I get halfway there, I want you to open the Strike's cockpit so that you can get me," Kira said explaining his plan. The plan was a high risk one, as he would be exposed to the hard vacuum for a few minutes. However, there was no time to go back and get changed and anyways he knew that his exposure should be brief enough that he would be fine. While someone who spent all of their life on Earth might still believe the old urban myths about humans exploding on "contact" with a hard vacuum or other such nonsense, Kira was well educated to the truth.

"But Kira..." Lacus began, worry evident in her voice.

"I will be okay Lacus. I may be out of it for a few moments after you collect me, but I should be fine. And, remember one of the enhanced attributes that they engineered into us Coordinators was improved survivability in space," Kira said as he began to open the inner airlock door. "I just wish that I could leave you here on the Archangel, but I don't want you to risk the return trip."

"Okay," Lacus replied, not happy at all about the situation, but knowing that there was no better solution and part of her was relieved that Kira was going to be piloting the Strike. While she had for the most part managed to distract herself from what she was about to do, the ride up in the elevator had given her time to realize what she was about to do and she was absolutely terrified. Then as Lacus rotated the torso of the Strike to face the airlock, she reviewed where the cockpit hatch controls were located as well as the controls to repressurize the cockpit. This would, unfortunately, use up a good bit of the reserve air, as no umbilical cords were currently connected to the Strike, and on top of that with two people in the cockpit the air supply would go even faster, but with any luck they would not need to fight a long battle. Not that any of these concerns nor the fact that she also wasn't wearing a pressure suit crossed Lacus's mind as she prepared to retrieve Kira.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

Reclaiming the Archangel's bridge was remarkably easy. The more seasoned members of the group that had headed that way had expected that they would have had to at least reason with some marines and technicians about bringing the Archangel back into service. However, to their surprise the bridge was utterly deserted; apparently, the Eurasian forces were exclusively interested in the Strike. That narrow mindedness had caused them to overlook the treasure trove of technology that was the Archangel itself, a treasure that needed no key to unlock. To some degree, overlooking the Archangel was not entirely unreasonable as prior to the Archangel capital ships were not very special. They had uses against fixed installations and as carriers for mobile armors, but they were also highly vulnerable to ZAFT's extremely maneuverable mobile suit force. Numerous Earth Alliance warships had fallen to ZAFT mobile suits that had managed to evade their defensive fire and destroy the ship's bridge or engines.

The Archangel, however, was different. The ship's defensive batteries were redesigned from the ground up specifically to hold off mobile suit squadrons. It's heavily automated and densely packed CIWS guns could easily shred wings of regular mobile suits by themselves and could even keep Phase Shift-equipped mobile suits at bay to a degree. That defensive strength was further enhanced by the experimental laminated armor and ablative gel dispensers that gave the Archangel the ability to protect itself almost as well as if it had Phase Shift Armor, its anti-beam depth charges, and the off-axis firing capability of its Gottfried cannons just added to that. All told, the defensive capabilities of the Archangel had allowed it to accomplish something that no other OMNI ship had to date, to survive without support and outnumbered in a mobile suit and capital ship engagement while taking only minor damage. Had the Archangel been any other OMNI ship, the time during which the Buster, Blitz, and Duel had free reign to attack the ship would have been more than sufficient to sink it.

The Archangel's bridge crew gladly accepted the bit of good luck that came from the Artemis's Commandant focusing all of his attention on the Strike and as soon as they slid into their stations they sounded Condition Two and began to prep the ship for launch, using the same accelerated check list that they had used less than twenty-four hours earlier. Though, this time they did not have to draw upon the facilities power, as their fusion reactors had never been shut down. The reactors had been idled, but until they received orders from Atlantic Federation HQ otherwise, no one was going to let their guard fully down by shutting down the reactors.

Condition Two was just sounding through the ship as La Flaga, Ramius, and Badgiruel stepped off the launch that they had commandeered to traverse the depressurized hanger bay. Hearing the alarm sound, the three officers knew that their crew had come to the same realization and then with a quick nod at each other, the three of them headed off to the bridge. Now normally, Mu would have at least first gone over to check out his mobile armor, but he was sure that the Commandant, confident as he was with the Light Wave Barrier, would not have allowed for any repair or maintenance work on the units. Thankfully, the Strike had avoided taking any serious damage while its Phase Shift Armor had been down and so was still fit to sortie and given that he didn't see it in the hanger when they arrived, Mu figured that the kid was already prepping for launch, _'Good thinking kid.'_

Upon arriving at the bridge only a few minutes after their arrival on the Archangel, the three officers moved to take their stations with Badgiruel immediately calling for status updates on the launch process. For his part, Mu, though, took a moment to first check on their youngest crew members, to give them some encouragement after their less than welcome reception by the Eurasian Federation. Coming up behind Miriallia and Sai he, on a whim, ruffled their hair and said, "You did good," letting them now that he was pleased to see them at their stations ready for combat.

Annoyed at the Lieutenant's condescending greeting, but at the same time very much relieved to see him and the Captain again Miriallia bit back her biting remark and, instead, just said, "I hope Kira made it to the hanger in time."

"Don't worry, we still have some time before we need the Strike out there and anyways it looked like he already had the Strike on the elevator." Mu replied.

"No, you don't understand; they took Lacus down there." Miriallia said.

"They were asking for the pilot of the Strike and Lacus said that she was the pilot so as to protect Kira," Sai said in explanation.

"Those two," was all that Mu could say in response, as he realized that in hindsight that he should have made Lacus change back into her civilian clothes as well. He had thought that telling them to lock down the activation codes for the Strike would have been sufficient to make them understand, but in retrospect he guessed that he should have explicitly told them to under no circumstances to let the Eurasian forces get a hold of the Strike. Shaking his head, he was about to walk away when he thought of something. "But how did the little miss convince them that she was the pilot. It would be hard enough for them to accept that the kid is the pilot, much less someone as delicate looking as her."

That comment got Miriallia's attention, but before she could ask him in a false sweet tone to explain what he meant, her board began to show activation of the catapult controls. Consequently, it was Sai who answered the Lieutenant's question, "She is a Coordinator."

Shaking his head in realization that the ship owed its survival to a pair of Coordinators, Mu gave them a final pat on their backs as he turned to go take his seat.

"GAT-X105 Strike, I am equipping you with the Sword Striker Pack," Miriallia said into the radio as she keyed in the corresponding commands, while also activating the launch deck.

"Thank you Miriallia," Lacus replied as the camera feed from the Strike activated to show a blob that Miriallia took to be Lacus attempting to move towards the back of the cockpit.

"You're welcome Lacus. Lacus am I right in assuming that Kira is there with you." Miriallia said, wanting to confirm what she thought was seeing.

"I am here Miriallia," Kira replied before turning his attention to Lacus and saying to her, "Lacus you will want to make sure you grab on tightly. There's going to be high acceleration during the launch."

After saying that, Kira proceeded to patiently wait for Lacus to get herself all settled. By this time the catapult status indicators had all changed to ready, and so Kira said, "Kira Yamato and Lacus Sagara launching."

Focused as Murrue and Natarle were in getting brought up to speed on the state of the ship and what information that their crew had been able to glean about the attack, they had not heard Mu's conversation with Miriallia and Sai. Their first indication that something was different with this sortie was when they heard Kira's launch statement, training causing them to pick those words up amongst the rest of the chatter.

"Ms. Sagara?" Badgiruel asked.

Looking up from his console, Sai replied, "It's a long story, but the short is that she was trying to protect Kira from the Artemis officers."

"Understood," Badgiruel replied before turning her attention back to the unfolding battle. The specifics of why Lacus was out there were not important now, but that did not mean that she would not get the whole explanation out of them later.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

**Eurasian Military Facility – Artemis  
Rear Hanger Bay**

Ten minutes following his launch with Lacus found Kira facing off against the Blitz as the Archangel slowly made its way towards the rear exit of the port. While the relatively closed quarters of the hanger combined with all of the debris that was being generated as Artemis began to fall to the rest of ZAFT's assault made for a difficult battle against the Blitz, Kira was at the same time glad for the resulting restrictions that the situation placed on his and the Blitz's ability to maneuver. Unlike him, Lacus was not firmly secured with a harness and could therefore be badly injured whenever he accelerated hard. Consequently, he winced each time that he had to fire a thruster hard to dodge out of the way of an attack, knowing that it had to be painful for Lacus, even if her grimaces of pain were nearly silent.

It was because of this concern for Lacus that Kira this time, stayed close in by the Archangel. He had no desire to prolong the battle and the support fire that he received from the ship helped to minimize the length of his engagements with the Blitz. While he still had to fight in close with the Sword, Kira was slipping in and out of the Archangel's covering fire as opposed to maintaining a continuous engagement with the Blitz. He hoped that the resulting non-melee moments allowed Lacus's arms to rest at least a little bit.

At the moment Kira was currently engaged in one of those melee engagements as he followed up a burst from his CIWS Igelstellung cannons with a parlay from his sword. The combined attack forced the Blitz to fly backwards a few dozen meters and taking the opening allotted to him, Kira fired his torso thrusters so as to maneuver back towards the Archangel.

As this was happening, Lacus spoke for the first time since the start of the battle, as she exclaimed, "Kira look out!" Till now she had kept quiet, knowing that Kira needed to concentrate; however, focused as he was on the Blitz, she was not sure that he saw that the major support beams were starting to come down on top of them.

Reacting to Lacus's warning, Kira immediately began scanning the entire area and caught sight of the falling debris. Flipping the Strike around, Kira engaged the larger primary thrusters that were located on its back, speeding him forward in just enough time to avoid being trapped. Taking a moment to glance in the rear camera feed, he sighed in relief when he saw that the falling debris had effectively cut him off from the Blitz. The Blitz was almost certainly okay, given that he had been the one in the fall path, but Kira did not really care, he had simply wanted to get the battle over with as soon as possible.

Turning his attention back to the primary cameras, Kira saw the last bit of the green glow from what had obviously been the Archangel using its Gottfrieds to forcibly open the rear exit to the harbor. Realizing that the battle was truly over now, Kira once again brought the main thrusters back to full power so as to catch up with the Archangel; though this time, he ramped them up a bit slower than last time. While he would still be able to catch up with the Archangel even when it brought its engine, up to a full burn, as the Mobile Suits had an extremely high maximum acceleration, he could only maintain the Strike's maximum acceleration for a relatively short duration before he expanded all of his fuel and he instinctively understood that the Captain would want to quickly go to and maintain an extended full burn so as to escape, while the destruction of Artemis still had ZAFT occupied.

Reaching the Archangel just as it began to exit through the now open rear harbor entrance; Kira brought the Strike down on its hull and engaged the electromagnets in the Strike's feet so that it would remain secure as the Archangel accelerated. Ideally, he would have liked to continue onto the hanger so as to offload Lacus; however, there was still the threat of coming across a ZAFT picket mobile suit and so for now he had to stand guard.

"Kira, forgive me. I am sorry," Lacus said a few moments later when she sensed that Kira had relaxed from being focused solely on the battle.

Turning his head the best that he could so as to look up at Lacus, Kira replied, "What for?" utterly confused as to what Lacus felt she needed to apologize for. He guessed that she might be feeling bad for having complicated things by saying that she was the pilot, but he understood that she had just been trying to protect him and did not fault her for that.

"For lying to you," a downbeat Lacus replied.

"I don't understand," a still confused Kira replied.

"I am a Coordinator and did not tell you, but forced you to go out there and fight against your friend."

Reaching up and behind himself, Kira grabbed Lacus's arms and pulled her in close to the seat. Then pulling her arms down and around on either side of him, he said, "You didn't do anything wrong. You just helped me to see the truth. Whether or not you were here, I would still have been fighting to protect my friends. You just helped me to see what was at stake and I thank you for that. And, as for you being a Coordinator, it doesn't matter to me. Whether you are a Natural or a Coordinator you are still you."

Smiling in response, Lacus rested her forehead down against the back of Kira's head glad that she had found such an understanding friend and wondering what she did to deserve him.

"Are you okay? You weren't hurt during the fighting?" Kira asked a couple of minutes later as he turned the Strike so that it was now facing towards the front of the Archangel.

"No, I am fine. The worst was when we launched. Maybe sometime when it is safer, you can take me out again," Lacus replied, as she began to realize that the flight was actually a bit enjoyable, outside of the fighting for their life bit of course. Then lifting her head from Kira's, she gasped, "Beautiful," as she took in the sight of the sun poking out from behind the Earth and shining down upon the front of the Archangel.

Confused by what Lacus was referring to Kira turned to look at her. Then, upon seeing where her gaze was directed, he looked back at the primary monitors again. Though, this time instead of looking for enemies he let himself just look at the view and now, seeing what Lacus was seeing, he, with a content smile agreed, "Yes it is."

**End Chapter 4**


	5. Atonement

**Chapter 5: Atonement **

**Date Posted: 7/3/09  
Last Edit: 7/3/09 **

**Disclaimer: **A reminder I own none of the characters of this story, all rights are owned by others. However, the unique circumstances of the story are mine. If you distribute the story, do only so freely and inform me of where you post it. If you wish to play in the universe variant that I am creating feel free, just send me a link to you story and give credit where credit is due.

_**Archangel  
**_

"I believe that we should let the kid take care of it." Mu suggested as he along with Natarle, took seats opposite Murrue in her office.

"You can't be suggesting that we let Ms. Sagara off without punishment. Those actions of hers were serious offenses and it was only because ZAFT found a way to defeat the Lightwave Barrier that an unlocked Strike is not currently in the hands of the Eurasian federation. And, then there is still the issue of her also being a coordinator," Natarle hottly replied.

"I do not disagree with your assessment," Mu replied to the surprise of Natarle, "and she does need to be made aware of how potentially disastrous her actions were. But we must choose our punishment correctly, especially because we cannot afford to alienate the kid as that would leave us defenseless."

"I agree, as unfortunate as the situation is from a command stand point, Mr. Yamato is in a position of significant power with him being our only mobile suit pilot and we must recognize that fact if we wish to complete our mission to deliver both the Archangel and the Strike to the Atlantic Federation," Murrue said contributing to the debate.

"However, even beyond that, a harsh punishment for Ms. Sagara would not accomplish anything," Mu said getting inquiring looks from both the XO and the Captain. Elaborating, Mu continued with, "She acted as she did to protect the kid. I am sure that she knew full well that by giving herself up to the custody of the Eurasian Federation that she likely would never see freedom again. With that in mind, any punitive punishment that we met out can only be mild when compared to that outcome and furthermore I expect that she will see any punitive punishment as an acceptable price to pay for protecting her boyfriend.

"What!" Natarle exclaimed.

"You mean to tell me you haven't noticed how they act around each other. It is only a matter of time before they are dating." Mu explained getting a knowing smile from the Captain.

While her duties as the ship's captain had kept Murrue from interacting much with Kira and Lacus, she was not at all surprised that something might be developing between the two kids. Though, from the little bit that she had gotten to know the lieutenant, she suspected that he was probably reading more into it than what was really there, at least currently. Lacus's stunt, though, did lend credence to his opinion and showed that she at least had strong feelings for their mobile suit pilot.

"The romantic standing of those two aside, Lieutenant La Flaga has a good point. Ms. Sagra was only thinking of how to best to protect her friend and the best way to prevent a repeat in the future is to open her eyes. We need to make her realize that sacrificing herself was not a valid option in that situation and to do so we need to make her realize how Mr. Yamato would have felt if she had been seriously injured, killed, or taken captive by the Eurasian Federation. A little guilt will go a long way to making her think more rationally in the future. That said, she still deserves an appropriate reprimand and as Executive Officer I leave that in your hands Ensign."

Recognizing the implied dismissal, Natarle stood and replied "Yes, ma'am," before saluting her captain.

Following suit, Mu also stood and saluted his captain before he and Natarle took their leave.

Watching her two senior officers leave, Murrue took a moment to massage her forehead with her hands. For not the first time, she wondered how her various instructors in officer training would have handled this situation. There had been some scenarios dealing with the loss of the senior command staff, but those all were tactical situations where she would have been relieved of her temporary command once the current engagement was over. And, then on top of running on her own, she had civilians in critical positions. They might be wearing OMNI uniforms and Mr. Yamato might have an officer rank, but Murrue knew that in all ways that counted that they were still civilians. It would still be some time before they lost their civilian mindset and she hoped that they would make it to safety before that was the case.

Turning her attention to the just completed meeting Murrue felt that she was beginning to make some progress with her XO. She did not fault the Ensign for her by-the-book approach and actually was glad that she had Natarle at her side. The woman had done a good job in running the CIC in the few engagements that they had so far and she made sure that the crew stayed in line, something that could easily and rapidly degenerate given their circumstances. The only area really where Natarle needed some work was with regard to Mr. Yamato.

The kid would not respond well to the direct pressure that one would normally use with any other soldier and so one had to be flexible in handling him. That was why she had earlier instructed the lieutenant to not assign him some of the more mundane duties that would have been given out to all available crew members such as deck swabbing and also why she was willing to allow Ms. Sagara quite a bit of leeway. She just hoped that by tying her decisions with regards to those two to the need to get the Archangel to the Atlantic Federation as opposed to just surviving she would be able to convince Natarle of their appropriateness or at minimum keep Natarle from questioning her in front of the crew. One of the last things that they could afford was the crew questioning her judgment and so she and her two senior officers needed to make sure that they presented a unified front to the crew, irregardless of how they felt about the situation in private.

_**  
OoOoOoOoOoOo**_

Not long after the two of them had left the Captain's quarters, Mu asked Natarle, "So what are your thoughts as to her punishment?"

"Some extra duties and a night in the brig should be sufficient."

"The duties?"

"While kitchen or laundry duty might be more traditional, I think that we would be best suited having her help the Chief with his little project," Nartarle replied, then seeing Mu's raised eyebrow she further elaborated, "I might not like it, but I can see both your and the Captain's point about us having to make due with what we have and irregardless of the situation we can benefit far more from her further developing her nascent skills as a mechanic and helping to bring the Chief's dream of a second MS on-line than by her joining the marines in the kitchen. I am still concerned about her also being a Coordinator. I don't feel that it is wise placing so much of our trust on them."

"It is not that I don't understand your concerns Ensign, but remember that as much as they are Coordinators they are also homeless civilians, civilians who were made homeless through the actions of ZAFT. As long as we are careful with how we use them, I don't think we need to worry about their loyalty. Anyways we only need to rely on them until we can join up with the fleet. Once that happens we won't need them to help fight and they can go back to just being civilians while they wait for transport down to Earth."

"I agree that he does have connections to the well being of this vessel due to his friends and that he is therefore unlikely to take any action that would put them and consequently this vessel into danger. However, what about the military secrets he has learned? It is not like these are production model units, and no matter what they have learned from the ones that they have captured, the Strike still has value of its own. Otherwise they would not have tried to capture it earlier."

"That is very true, and I only hope that the brass recognize the sacrifice that the kid as well as the girl have put in and treat them appropriately. They are Orb citizens, which means that once we join up with the rest of the fleet they should be quickly repatriated back to Orb. And, if he isn't, I am sure that his friends will make sufficient noise," Mu replied, though, this time with a slightly downbeat response. He seriously hoped that no one would get the bright idea of locking the two of them up in an internment camp for having been exposed to highly classified military secrets. However, after the battle of Endymion with the supposedly accidental overload of the water purification system Cyclops system, he did have some serious doubts.

Nodding her understanding, Natarle had nothing to reply to the lieutenant's mentioning of the possibility of an intermittent camp for Mr. Yamato and Ms. Sagara. While she might not believe that he should be allowed access to the Strike and its secrets that did not mean that she felt that he should be locked up, he should just be back with the rest of the civilians.

With that topic of conversation completed, the two continued on in silence for the rest of the journey to the crew quarters. The first of the quarters that they began to pass by were the ones that had been assigned to the marines, after which came on one side of the hall the room that had been assigned to Miriellia, Tolle, Sai, and Kuzzy and on the other side was the room that belonged to Lacus and the twelve children that had insisted on remaining with her. Actually it was really nine young children who refused to be seperated from the black haired girl, the others being three preeteens who offered to stay and help Lacus. Then on the otherside of those two rooms, along both sides of the hall, were the quarters for the rest of the ship's enlisted crew. As for the other civilians, they were quartered in another portion of the ship, segregated from the crew.

Coming to stop a few doors down from Lacus's quarters, Natarle said, "Lieutenant, if you would, could you go and check to see if Mr. Yamato is in Ms. Lacus's quarters and if he is could you take him on an errand?"

"You want to make sure that the kid does not attempt to protect his girlfriend from her punishment?" Mu replied, though he did not wait for an answer before continuing on.

'_While I could go in there and ignore his attempts to protect her, it would not serve any purpose and it would do me no good to also have to discipline Mr. Yamato. After all who would then look after the children that Ms. Sagara has with her.'_ Natarle said to herself as she watched Mu head off.

_**  
OoOoOoOoOoOo**_

Looking up as heard the door to her quarters open a few minutes after Kira had left with the Lieutenant, Lacus turned towards the door, wondering if Kira had forgotten something. However, it was not Kira but Ms. Natarle, the ship's XO. Already having resigned herself to the punishment that she was about to receive, Lacus turned back to the children for a moment and said, "Now I want all of you to behave yourself until Kira returns. If something happens before Kira gets back you should ask one of the helpful crew members in the adjoining quarters."

Sensing the importance in Lacus's words, the children all quietly nodded their heads and did not question where she was going. Satisfied that the kids were going to behave themselves, Lacus slowly stood up and made her way over to the XO. Pausing for a moment as she was just about to leave the quarters she looked down and to the right to address Mr. Pink as it had begun to follow her. "Mr. Pink I want you to stay here too. Wait for Kira, Ok?"

"Can do! Can do!" the robot chanted as it began to bounce.

Then not waiting for her toy to change its mind about following her, she quickly exited the room and closed the door.

"Follow me," Natarle commanded before walking away.

Following in step behind the Ensign, Lacus kept her head held high, knowing that whatever the consequences might be that she had done the right thing. Kira was more important than her own freedom and if she spent the rest of the trip in the brig and then the war in an Atlantic Federation cell she would still have made the right decision. That did not mean that Lacus wasn't afraid of what she was about to face, but she knew that she would have the knowledge that she had made the right decision to ward of the despair.

_**OoOoOoOoOoOo **_

Arriving at the entrance to the brig, Natarle slid open the door. Entering into the main room that doubled as the warden's office and held the cage for minor offenses, Natarle paused to turn on the lights. However, the switch was unresponsive. _'Should have expected that.'_ Natarle thought to herself realizing that of course the brig would be only on emergency power since they had shutdown power to this section of the ship, a fact that was made quite obvious due to the absence of regular lighting in the corridors for this area. While there was no worry of them depleting their reactor fuel stores, that was one thing that they had more than enough of, there was no reason to keep unoccupied sections of the ship energized more than necessary as inert sections were less likely to react badly to battle damage.

For a moment Natarle paused by the switch to consider heading back out to find the nearest emergency station and grabbing a flashlight. If the brig had actually been used that probably would have been necessary, but as she looked around the room she was able to make out in the dim emergency lights the location of the key ring. Heading over to the warden's desk, she took the ring off the wall and then heading over to the cage, she unlocked the door.

Not needing to be told what was expected of her, Lacus simply walked into the cage. Once inside, she turned around and faced Natarle.

"Ms. Sagara your assistance with maintaining the Strike has been very beneficial to the ship and we have allowed you a lot more liberty than the rest of the civilian refuges. However, your actions this afternoon were far out of line and if the situation was different you would be facing charges of theft and espionage and most likely following a quick trial you would be summarily executed," Natarle said in a very stern voice.

For the most part, Lacus kept a mask of indifference to what Natarle said, but she did slip up slightly when Natarle mentioned being killed. Seeing that reaction, Natarle internally smiled that she was able to get the girl to realize the seriousness of her actions; though, still Natarle doubted that Ms. Sagara, even knowing that, would do anything different.

"I am sure that you believe that such a fate would still be worth it if you could help Mr. Yamato. After all you could hardly have expected anything different when you foolishly volunteered yourself to the Eurasian boarding party. But think about what your sacrifice would have done to the children that you are looking after. Did you stop to think how they would have reacted when they found out you were dead? Or how about Mr. Yamato, the one that you were trying to protect? How would he have handled the guilt of knowing that you gave your life for him?

"You are his reason for fighting. You are the one who convinced him to fight in the first place. Would he have taken your sacrifice to mean that he was insufficiently strong? And how about the rest of the refugees aboard this ship? Who would have protected them once Mr. Yamato lost his will to fight and what would they use to protect this ship given that you had gone and given the Strike, our only means of defense, to the Eurasian nation."

Listening to those words of Natarle, Lacus felt her resolve breaking. _'I did the right thing didn't I? I had to protect Kira?'_ Lacus thought as she tried to convince herself that she was not wrong. However, she could not get the image of a grieving Kira out of her mind, an image that was made all the more real by how broken up Kira had actually been when they had returned to the Archangel. While Kira had not shown any sign that he had been upset or anything while they were out in the Strike, the moment that they had exited the Strike he had proceeded to hug her very tightly while admonishing her not to do anything like that again.

Seeing that her words were beginning to have the desired effect, Natarle had to admit to herself that La Flaga appeared to have been correct. While Mr. Yamato had not had the chance of "dealing" with her actions to any degree yet, she could already see that his thoughts would have a big impact on Ms. Sagara and her isolation tonight would only accentuate that effect.

"Ms. Sagara, for your actions against the ship you are hereby sentenced to spend the night in the brig. In the morning you will be released and for the next seven days you will spend all of the time outside of your sleep shift working on the hanger deck on the direction of Chief Murdoch. Do you are understand your punishment?"

"Yes, ma'am," Lacus replied with a wavering voice as she fought to hold back her sorrows for messing up so badly.

"Good," Natarle replied as she slammed the cell door shut. Then turning sharply, she left the brig and as she closed the door to the corridor the already dim light became practically nothing. However, that suited Lacus just fine as the darkness provided her with comfort as she slid to the floor and let the despair finally take her.

Sitting down on the thin mattress, Lacus pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them as she thought about Kira some more. Was it really that unsurprising that he would be hurt if she had been taken prisoner. She had already seen how he looked after his friends and it was his desire to protect them along with the kids that drove him to pilot the Strike. He was a gentle soul, and was in many ways similar to Athrun, but in other ways far more delicate. She had held and sung to him the other night as he had drifted off to sleep and for him to let her do that he had to have already let her a fair bit into his heart, which meant that he would be hurt if something happened to her.

Now really realizing how close she had come to royally messing up, Lacus began to cry, crying as she had not cried since she was young. If it had not been for that ZAFT attack, she most likely would now be in an Eurasian brig as a ZAFT spy, that is if they hadn't decided to summarily execute her. Thinking about that outcome, she felt nothing over what could have happened to herself. Instead, her thoughts turned to how Kira would have taken the news and her tears came faster.

When Lacus finally fell asleep sometime later the unanswered question of how could she shield him but not hurt him by getting hurt herself was running through her mind.

_**OoOoOoOoOoOo  
**_

The following morning, Kira rose early and after quickly dressing headed down to the brig. He hoped that Lacus was doing okay. As much as her stunt bothered him he did not feel that she deserved to be placed into the brig. Thankfully, that part of her punishment was only for the single night; though, he was not sure if that was more because watching after the children had fallen to him than because that was all that they felt she deserved.

Thinking about the children, Kira was glad that Lacus would be back with them this night, as getting them to sleep the previous night had been quit a chore. Besides the fact that Lacus did not sleep with them that night they had also had not yet fully recovered from the whole Artemis incident – the local marines, not expecting civilians on the ship, had given the kids quite a scare. Though, thankfully a number of them had managed to procure treats for the kids after the initial take down of the ship. Even still the children had been unsettled from not being able to be with himself and Lacus during the whole incident and no amount of candy could deal with the logic of a child's mind and then throwing in the unexpected battle and their still not being able to see Lacus and you get some quite distraught children.

Kira had eventually gotten them to settle down; though, he had to spend the night in their room to do so, not that he minded. While the older children slept in their own beds, the younger ones all slept in one bed, the bed that he had ended up sleeping in as well. While sleeping with a handful of children did make the bed a bit cramped, it had overall been a fairly enjoyable experience and the faint fragrance on the pillow had been quite relaxing and much sooner than he would have thought possible he had fallen asleep.

Waking up this morning, Kira could easily have fallen back asleep with those kids, but remembering why he was sleeping with them in the first place forced him fully awake. Badgiruel had not given a specific time that Lacus was to stay in the brig to, only that she was to spend the night in confinement and so Kira had no plan of letting her stay in there longer than she needed. He was just glad that it was Birdie who had woken him up and not Haro, as Haro did not know the meaning the word quite. In some ways, Lacus's toy seemed wrong for such a kind and soft spoken person, but from the interplay of the two of them he knew that Haro was perfectly suited for Lacus just as Birdie was perfectly suited for himself. His friend seemed to have a strong personality hidden under her quite demeanor and Haro helped to force that inner fire out into the open by casuasing everyone in the vicinity to take notice of her.

Reaching the brig, Kira had a final thought as to wonder if Lacus knew someone like Athrun, as he was sure that if asked to make a toy for Lacus that Athrun would have made something like Haro. Maybe when this foolish war was over he could suggest that Athrun look up whoever had made Lacus's toy. From that pleasant thought, Kira's thoughts, unfortunately, then drifted to the fact that Athrun had participated in the attack on Heliopolis. _Athrun, why?_ Kira still could not understand why Athrun was part of ZAFT. His best friend absolutely abhorred fighting and there was no way that the Athrun he knew would join the military, ZAFT or OMNI.

Now, however, was not the time for those thoughts. Lacus needed to know that he did not harbor any hard feelings for what she did the other day and he couldn't let her mistake his being upset with Athrun for him being upset with her. Consequently, Kira took a few moments to rain in his emotions before opening the doors and entering into the brig.

Absently walking up to Lacus's cell, Kira stopped at the bars and watched the young woman sleep. The half lighting that had lit the brig most of the night once someone had routed power back to this portion of the ship might not have been the best lighting to sleep under, but Lacus had still been able to fall asleep, exhausted by her crying. Still sound asleep, Lacus had at some point balled up the thin sheet that she had been allotted and curled around it. Smiling sadly at the sight before him, knowing that Lacus's heart hurt last night, Kira turned and quickly walked back to the warden's desk to retrieve the key for Lacus's cell.

Once he returned to the cell, he quietly unlocked the door and gently walked over to her bed. Reaching his friend, he reached down with his hand to stroke some of the hairs away from her cheek and in so doing so he saw the tear tracks that streaked her normally beautiful face. Not thinking about what he was doing, he carefully picked up his sleeping friend and settled her into his lap as he adjusted his position to be sitting more squarely on the bed so that he could lean his back against the wall. While he had planned on waking her, seeing her now he found that he could not bring himself to break her slumber and so he did the next best thing which was to at least give her comfort as she slumbered here in the brig. For a moment he thought about taking her back to her quarters, but he had a feeling that she would want to clean herself up before the children saw her and so he settled for just holding her; though, before long he began to drift off to sleep as well as it was after all still quite early in the morning.

_**OoOoOoOoOoOo  
**_

A little over an hour later found the XO of the ship, Ensign Natarle Badgiruel, heading to the brig to let Lacus go.

"Heading to the brig?" Mu asked as turned a corner to find Natarle heading his way.

"Yes I am."

"There is no need, the kid has already seen to it."

"What? She was supposed to spend the night in the brig," Natarle replied upset that Kira had interfered with Lacus's punishment.

Holding up his hands in a slight warding manner, Mu replied, "She did spend the night. However, I don't think we ever told the kid what time in the morning she could be released at and it looks like he got up early to release her. However, you still need not worry as the little miss did not leave the cell."

Natarle raised her eyebrow at that not quite understanding.

"The kid apparently could not bring himself to wake her and instead fell asleep on her bed with her in his arms." Mu further explained with a large smile. _'Just wish I had thought to bring a camera down with me. But at least I should be able to get something off of the security cameras. I am sure that he would like a momento like that to carry with him in the Strike.'_ Mu thought to himself.

"Well Ms. Sagara still needs to wake up, she has a long duty list ahead of her for the day." Natarle replied a few moments later and with a slight more gentle tone than was her usual.

"Let me handle it, I am going to speak with the Chief about something and if they are not up by the time I am finished, I will wake them."

"That is acceptable," Natarle said before turning and heading back to the officer's mess so that she could get her own breakfast.

oOoOoOoOoOo

When she was home, Lacus liked to stay in bed for a while after her alarm went off snuggling further into the warmth of the covers and enjoying the morning sun. Though, with all the traveling that she did for her music career she often either did not get the opportunity for the lazy wakeup or when she did have the opportunity the bed was not comfortable enough for that kind of wakeup. Only partially awake, Lacus's sleepy mind was taking full advantage of the opportunity she was being given this morning and snuggled further into her bedding. Enjoying the feeling, she couldn't remember the last time that she had been able to sleep in and she was kind of surprised that the kids hadn't awoken her yet.

_'The kids!'_ that thought rang through Lacus's mind as her mind finally woke up sufficiently that she was able to realize that she shouldn't feel as comfortable as she did. Remembering that she was in the brig, she was puzzled by why she was feeling so comfortable. For a moment she debated with her desire to ignore the why and to just enjoy this luxury, but her curiosity quickly won out and the pop star opened her eyes. The first thing that she noticed was that she was still in her cell, as she could see the bars out of her left eye, her right eye being pressed against what ever she was sleeping on. Though, as she looked at the bars, Lacus realized after a few moments that she wasn't laying down, then feeling her head slightly rise and fall she began to realize that she was being held.

With a blush breaking out over her actions of only a few moments ago when she had tried to snuggle into whomever was holding her, Lacus raised her head off of her benefactor's chest and turned her head to look up. Seeing an equally blushing Kira, Lacus felt another moment of warmth as she gave her friend a smile.

"You looked like you could use a hug," Kira said in explanation to Lacus. He had never meant to fall asleep, he was just going to let her sleep for a little while longer before waking her. But just like when she had sung him to sleep he had felt so content, he had fallen asleep and it was only her attempts to snuggle into his chest that had woken him, those attempts were also why he was blushing so heavily right now.

Reaching out with his right hand, Kira softly brushed one of the dried tear tracks on Lacus's face and said, "I am sorry I got upset at you yesterday. I know you were only trying to do what you could to help. I didn't know that they were going to throw you in the brig," Kira said feeling a bit guilty for how he had been unable to apologize to Lacus before she was forced to spend the night in the brig.

Feeling herself blush even more when Kira touched her cheek, Lacus did not, however, attempt to move out of his hold. Looking up to meet his eyes, she replied, "Don't feel sad about what you said. You were right to say what you wanted to say."

"But..." Kira tried to say before Lacus released one of her hands that had during her slumber clenched onto Kira's shirt and reached up placed her finger on his lips.

"Sush... It is okay. Ms. Badgirual explained to me why my actions were wrong when she locked me up. My tears were because she was right. I was so worried about you being taken by those Eurasian officers that I did not stop to think what my going in your place would do to you. I was so worried about you in that battle before Artemis when the ZAFT units captured your MS and I should have realized that you might feel something similar if I was to be taken captive by the Eurasian forces. However, I just thought that you wouldn't be able to see me as anything more than the girl who had forced you to fight, to fight against your best friend."

Saying her piece, Lacus began crying again and seeing that Kira pulled the girl back in tight against his chest and simply held her for a few moments. "Lacus, I don't think of you like that. You are one of my friends and I care for you as much as I care about Tolle, Mir, Kuzzy, and Sai. And, like I told you on the Strike I don't blame you for involving me in this war. Ms Murrue would have gotten me involved with or without your help, you just helped me to understand that as much as I detest this useless war that I still want to do everything that I can to protect my friends and that includes you."

"You mean it?" Lacus asked as she pulled back away from Kira and looked up at him with need in her eyes.

"Yes I do," Kira replied before pulling her back in against her chest in a strong hug. Then after releasing and with a grin he continued with, "Now let's get you cleaned up. I am sure that Mr. Pink is awake by now and he is probably driving everyone crazy without you around."

The mental image of Mr. Pink going on a rampage around the ship looking for her brought smile to Lacus's face as a giggle escaped. She could only imagine the havoc that that particular Haro could get into if it got into its mind to go looking for her, especially with its ability to crack practically any lock.

"Now that's better," Kira said as he released his hold on his friend and let her climb off the bed.

Following her out of the bed, he guided her out of the cell and after pausing for a moment to return the keys to the warden's desk they continued out into the hall. Stopping at the first head that they came to, Kira took Lacus inside. Then after directing her over to one of the sinks, he quickly used the hand soap to wash the tear tracks off of her face.

"There that is much better," Kira replied when finished.

"Thank you," Lacus replied, a little offset by his actions.

"Couldn't let you report to your duty station with those tears on your face. I am sorry that we don't have time for you to really wash up, as we kind of overslept there," Kira said with a bit of blush returning as he mentioned sleeping.

"That's okay, the extra sleep was worth it. As you might imagine I didn't sleep well initially last night," Lacus replied, attempting to hide the fact that she simply liked being able to sleep in Kira's arms with just being able to sleep in.

"Well if you will give me a moment, I need to use the facilities and then we can go grab a quick bite to eat before heading over to the hanger."

"That sounds good," Lacus replied with her regular smile returning to her face before deciding that she would also use the facilities.

_**OoOoOoOoOoOo **_

Fifteen minutes later after having had a fast breakfast with Lacus, Kira was hustling on back to Lacus's room to check on the children. He could not believe that he had completely forgotten about them.

"Kira!" the kids yelled as he entered the room.

"Hey," Kira replied as she knelt down on the floor so that the younger ones could run up and give him a morning hug.

"Where's Lacus-san?" six year old Henry asked.

"Remember when I said last night that she was having a timeout?" Kira replied. Getting a nod he continued, "Well today she has some extra chores as punishment, but she will be back tonight."

"Promise?" Emily, who had been listening intently to Kira, asked with a slight tremor to her voice.

Leaning over, Kira picked the second youngest of the children up into his arms, "I promise." Then changing the subject, "Did one of the older kids help you get dressed this morning?" when he noticed that all of the kids were dressed and ready for the day.

"Triala did." Emily replied with a large smile."And, see my hair?"

"That is a quite pretty braid," Kira commented, before mouthing thankyou to the three older kids, who had obviously watched out for the younger ones when they had awoken.

"Now have you all had breakfast?" And upon receiving a series of confirmations, he said, "okay Jacob, Henry, Makoto, Sasuke, Emily, and Michelle I want you all to pair up and then Triela, Jeremy, and Erin I want one of you to join up with one of the pairs."

Once the kids had formed into triples, each with one older child and two younger ones, Kira continued, "Okay we are going to go an a little field trip. I have to perform some maintenance on my Mobile Suit, and so you get to come to the hanger with me." Then after pausing to wait for the cheering to die down, he continued. "Now I want you all to be very careful in there and to do exactly what I say. It can be quite dangerous with all of the work that will be going on and I don't want any of you to get hurt. I am going to find an out of the way location where you can draw and play cards while still staying near me."

Then turning his attention to the three older ones, he addressed his next set of comments directly to them, "Triela, Erin, Jeremy I expect each of you three to watch out for the other two that you have with you. I am counting on you to make this work. I want your trios to stay together at all times. If one needs to go to the bathroom, let me know and then take the other with you as well."

"No problem," Triela said with a large smile, showing that she was looking forward to the opportunity to babysit two of the kids.

"Will do," was Jeremy's reply.

"Sure thing," was Erin's reply.

"Okay then. Emily and Michelle take the hands of Triela, Jacon and Henry take the hands of Jeremy, and Makoto and Michelle take the hands of Erin." Kira said. Except for Emily all of the younger ones quickly took a hold of their assigned big brother/sister for the day. Emily, however, stayed with her arms wrapped around Kira's leg from where she had gravitated when he had stood up early after hugging her upon his arrival.

Looking down at the blond haired child, Kira smiled as he reached down to unlatch one of her arms from his legs and said, "Come on Emily you need to go hold Triala's hand."

"Uh uh. Want you," the young girl replied with a vigorous shake of her head, making it quite clear that she did not want to be separated Kira.

"You want to see Kira's mobile suit don't you?" Triala asked as she walked over and knelt in front of Emily.

Emily took a moment to visibly contemplate that question as she did want to see that machine again, she especially liked all of its colors. But she also did not want to let go of Kira, afraid that he was going to disappear like Lacus. She, however, did not get the chance to complete her contemplation as Triala took advantage of Emily being distracted by her thoughts to wrap the young girl up into arms.

"Here you ride in my arms, how about that?" Triala asked.

While Emily did not quite like that option as much as staying with Kira, she finally showed her acceptance by cuddling into Triala's arms.

"Thank you." Kira said softly to Triala as the brunette adjusted her hold on Emily so that she could have one arm free for holding Michelle's hand – that being one nice thing about micro-gravity.

Now that the children were all set, Kira took a few moments to gather up some paper, pens, and cards before leading out of the room and to the hanger. While he was pretty sure that the chief would not be too pleased with him for bringing them along to the hanger, he really did not have any other option. There wasn't really anyone that the crew could spare to look over the kids and he was not too sure how they would have reacted to anybody else anyways, after all they had already refused once to join up with the other civilians like the other twenty children that Lacus originally with her had done.

As for just staying with them in their room all day that was not an option either. While he had not technically been assigned the responsibility of maintaining the Strike, he knew that for the next week that looking after the MS would be his responsibility. There was no flexibility in the crew rosters and so Lacus's punishment put them in a bit of a tight spot. The fact that Mr. Murdoch would likely still have Lacus maintain her normal mechanic in training duties never crossed his mind that morning when he made his decision to finish the Strike's turn around – the night shift having performed the basic turn around already. Anyways he also wanted to check on some the Strike's systems that seemed to be reacting slightly out of where he wanted them during the previous day's battle.

_**OoOoOoOoOoOo **_

As expected Murdoch was a fair bit put out by Kira showing up with the Children in tow; however, he did not stand in Kira's way. Like much of the crew he was willing to bend quite far to help the kid out. Ideally it would be best to just ask one of the other civilians to watch the kids, but at the same time he did not want to antagonize their one Mobile Suit pilot. Something that was made worse by Kira just being a kid himself, even if he was a fairly level headed one and not subject to the normal irrational decision making of teens. And, anyways it was not like there was not room in the hanger that they could use. The Archangel was supposed to have been outfitted with all five G-weapons plus a fair number of the Mobile Armors currently employed by the Earth Forces and so with just one Mobile Armor and one Mobile Suit, plus the project there was more than enough free space for the kids to set up shop.

Initially, the kids had made use of the cards and papers that Kira had brought with him. Though, at some point one of the techs had in taking a break had stopped by to check on the kids and in doing so questions were asked and before the Chief or Kira knew it the kids had a pile of parts that needed to be clean and grease smudges all over their faces. When he finally became of what the kids were doing, Murdoch could only chuckle as images of a pint sized crew for the Archangel danced in his head. Shaking his head he called up to Kira, "Hey kid, you better be careful or before you know it you will be too old to fly that thing."

"Huh?" Kira thought to himself before leaning out of the Strike's cockpit. Seeing that Murdoch was angling his head towards the kids, he dropped down to the hanger floor and walked over to see what they had gotten themselves into. Seeing the diligent crew of grease covered kids before himself, he grinned and said, "It looks like Lacus is going to have some little helpers."

Hearing Kira's voice the kids all looked up and over. Triala for her part blushed as Kira raised an eyebrow at the large stack of very shiny clean parts that she had produced, having gotten quite into the job. At the other end of the spectrum with respect to reactions was Emily who while only being on her third part quickly dashed over to Kira to show him how big of a help she was being.

Catching the tumbling ball that was Emily being a little too enthusiastic in hurrying on over, Kira settled the now giggling child in his arms he listened to her describe how she was helping him by cleaning a dirty tube.

_**  
OoOoOoOoOoOo**_

While Kira took a break and listened to the children, led by Emily, launch into a detailed description of their activities, the remaining officers of the Archangel were again gathered in the Captain's quarters planning their next course of action.

"It would appear that the fiasco at Artemis has allowed us to slip away from our ZAFT pursuers," Murrue stated starting the meeting. "Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go."

"It is a shame that no other ship appears to have been able to escape from Artemis, for if we had a task force sized group, we could risk a full burn lunar trajectory." Mu said.

"But with it being just us, such an action would draw the attention of at least one ZAFT patrol before we would be able to reach the moon," Natarle replied understanding both why Mu's suggestion would have worked with a task force sized group and why it would not work with just one ship, even if it was the Archangel. "And, to make matters worse we were unable to resupply or even effect repairs why we were at the Artemis.

"Though, at least between what he was able to do on the final approach to Artemis and over the past ten hours, the Chief has been able to bring the ship back up to full combat readiness and the Meobius Zero is fully prepped for launch again. However, our supplies of consumables, in particular water is starting to become critical."

"I spoke earlier this morning with Dr. Dawson and Mr. Green regarding the situation and the need to conserve our supplies, so we should expect the civilian refugees to comply in this regard," Murrue added referring to the two men who had been selected to represent the refugee population in discussions regarding their situation aboard the Archangel. Dawson had been selected by Murrue to be a point of contact as she was familiar with him for he was the one who had treated the gunshot wound that she had received on Heliopolis and he was now acting as the ship's doctor and Mr. Green who had been a local community leader had been near by when Murrue had asked Dawson and had hence offered his assistance as well. Initially all three had expected that the relationship would be very short, only needing to last till they reached Heliopolis. But now things had changed and Murrue did not envy the two for being responsible for keeping the civilian population in check.

Taking a moment to look down at the charts that were laid out over Murrue's desk, Mu began tracing various approach routes that they could use to reach the Moon. While the ship's reactors would long outlast the rest of their supplies, it would still be best for them to choose a route that minimized the use of the engines. Each time they fired up the engines there was a chance that a ZAFT patrol or satellite might catch sight of the resulting thermal signature. While more than likely any such occurrence would just be cataloged, there was always the possibility that a patrol might be diverted to determine the source of the heat source and once they were positively identified it would only be a matter of hours to maybe a day at best before they were faced with a full ZAFT strike force.

Unfortunately, the simple trajectories, ones that were not the obvious ones from Artemis to the Moon, all ran through the debris belt. That ring of abandoned hardware preexisted the breakout of war between the nations of OMNI and the PLANTS, but with the war it had significantly grown in size. With the distortions caused by the N-Jammers there was no way to plot a safe course through the belt until one was actually in it, which meant that they would be having to use their engines quite frequently. _'However, if there is one area where the thermal signatures from our engine would either be blocked or just ignored as being routine , the debris belt would be it.'_ Mu thought to himself, as he began to think like a pilot.

Debris ridden space was one area in which the Earth Alliance mobile armor pilots were quite successful in taking out the ZAFT mobile suits. The various chunks of debris, which tended to both deflect radar beams and to concentrate the the N-Jammer effects in random areas, made the use of instruments practically useless in such areas, leaving pilots only with their eyes. Furthermore in the areas with the heaviest concentration of debris, sight-lines were often quite short, which meant that thermal signatures did not go far. _'Yes that would be the perfect path to take the Archangel on. No commander would willing take a capital ship in through such garbage filled region of space. While a ship's armor should protect it from impact with the little stuff there is always the risk that the little stuff might actually be unexploded ordnance. The Archangel's ablative armoring should give us some extra protection in that regard, and furthermore if we keep our engine use to minimum we should be able to convince ZAFT that we did not go this way as they would expect a large thermal source from us constantly moving if we did.'_

"Are you suggesting that we go through the debris belt?" Natarle asked as she saw the Lieutenant begin to trace multiple different paths through that region of space. "You do realize that it would be suicide going through that section of space?"

"No I don't think so. We will, of course, have to be very careful and keep our relative speed to the bulk of the material in the belt low, but I think that it is our best option. If I was piloting my Meobius Zero, this is the route that I would want to take."

"The Archangel, however, is not the Meobeius Zero. We won't be able to avoid all of the debris and using our engines that much would be sure to attract unwanted attention and that is assuming we don't have to use of armament to clear out any of the debris. We are far better taking a roundabout approach to the Moon."

"Do we have sufficient supplies to take a roundabout route?" Murrue asked.

Sighing, Nartale replied, "Not unless we go to extreme rationing of the water, and even then it will be touchy especially if we have to engage in any further combat."

"Then our only option is to go through the debris belt?"

"Unless we want to take a route that ZAFT is sure to be patrolling," Mu replied. "However, the Archangel has already shown that she is a strong ship and I believe that she would have no trouble navigating the belt. We have taken how many missile impacts and our armor is still at at least 80% of its nominal rating over the entire hull, and it is only that low because of the beam impacts that we have taken. Running across unexploded ordnance should not be a worry."

"The Lieutenant is right, the Archangel has shown that it can take the punishment. We will still need to carefully plot our route to pick a route that minimizes the use of our engines and keeps the debris impacts to a reasonable level," Natarle said, trailing off at the end as she began to realize something. "There is another benefit to take this route, it will solve at least some of our supply problem."

"Huh, How?" Mu and Murrue both asked, confused by what Nartarle meant.

"What makes the debris belt so dangerous is not the small trash that has collected in it, but the larger objects that it contains. Back in the early days of colonization of space, before it was realized how bad of an idea it was, old colonies were towed to this region of space for disposal. Similarly old ships both civilian and military have been disposed of here. Initially this was a graveyard orbit before its uncontrolled use got out of hand and turned it into the navigation hazard that it has become. Therefore, we are bound to come across material that can be salvaged."

"But wouldn't the junk guilds have already combed through anything valuable?" Murrue asked.

"Yes they would have, but that would primarily have been advanced tech and some of the more expensive composites and alloys. However, none of that is of any use to us. The weapon systems on the Archangel are far more advanced than anything in the belt and the Archangel had already been loaded with its full load out of base materials for repairs. No, what we need the most is water and food and those are items that would have not been salvaged. Any value the water would have had in the past few decades would have been offset by the added cost of purifying it. However, for us with fully charged reactors purifying the water would not be any sort of strain on our systems.

"I understand, in that case I want the two of you to determine the optimal route for both avoiding ZAFT and resupplying ourselves with. Also, Ensign please inform Mr. Yamato, Ms Sagara, and the rest of their friends that I would like to speak with them this evening."

Then seeing the questioning look that she was getting from the Lieutenant, she elaborated, "I want to let them know about my plans to take the ship into the debris belt and to salvage what we can find. I know that doing so is a bit irregular, but only a short while ago these kids were just innocent civilians and we need them to be at 100%. The trip through the belt will be hard enough, having them distracted by the morality of us scavenging from destroyed vessels will only make the trip that much dangerous."

"Of course, captain," Natarle replied. While Natarle felt that the Captain was generally coddling the new recruits, she refused to think of them as anything more special than recruits that had received their training, in this case she did see the Captain's logic. While her own approach might make better soldiers out of them and at a faster pace, they could not afford to have the new recruits performing below the best that they could. In reality there was a fair bit of similarity to the Sagara situation. While she would like nothing better than to toss the girl into the brig for the remainder of the trip to the Moon, she also realized that doing so would utterly destroy the effectiveness of their only mobile suit pilot.

It was those thoughts that ran through Natarle's head as she and Mu left Murrue's quarters and returned to the bridge. Stepping into the lift that would take them up to the bridge, Mu broke into Natarle's thoughts with the comment, "You do realize that both of your approaches to the kids are the correct ones?"

"Huh?" Natarle responded, having partially forgotten that Mu was even walking along side of her.

"Back in the early days of the war I was assigned to a cruiser with an XO who would make you look like a kitten and a captain that was like a kindly grandfather to every member of the crew. Often you would find Captain Amos walking the bowels of the ship and he also made it a point of getting to know the newest crew members that were assigned to his ship. However, if you even thought about violating the rules, before you knew what hit you the XO would have you strung up.

"You would think that with such divergent methods of running the ship that the ship would have made it a basket case. However, that was far from the truth. Captain Amos valued very much the input of his XO, even if he often went against it, but he had the confidence that his XO would implement the course of action that he chose. While it might seem that as XO you would have very similar responsibilities to our Captain that is not the case. You need to make sure that the ship and its crew consistently meet the direction that the Captain sets, while she has the responsibility of determining the best course of action for the ship as a whole."

Pondering Mu's words for a moment, Natarle finally replied, "I think I see your point. It is similar to the difference between tactical and strategic actions," as the lift reached the bridge and the door opened.

"That is correct," Mu confirmed as he left the lift and headed to his bridge duty station, knowing that he had given the young Ensign some food for thought. It would probably still be a while before she fully digested what he had said, he had a feeling that his words had reached her. There were many different for leaders and in the case of a warship it was often the case that two very divergent leadership styles working together gave the most effective Captain-XO combination, and with any luck this would keep some of the chafing of their youngest crew members to a minimum.

-End chapter


End file.
